STEM Archives | re:3D | Life-Sized Affordable 3D Printing

A Journey of 3D Printing Innovation & Collaboration with YLAI Fellows

re:3D was first introduced to the US Department of State’s Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative (YLAI) in 2017. YLAI’s vision is to create a vibrant network of entrepreneurs across the Western Hemisphere. A key way this is achieved is through a Fellowship Placement with a business in the United States for four weeks. The Fellowship Placement is an opportunity for YLAI Fellows to experience the U.S. work culture and connect with key players in their industry. The YLAI Fellowship offers hands-on experience in exchange for using their skills and network to contribute to U.S. businesses and organizations. The Fellowship not only provides business insight and network for the Fellows but also provides their placement companies with cross-cultural understanding. Businesses form long-term relationships with their Fellows, extending the Fellowship well past the initial four-week placement.

Since 2017, re:3D has hosted three YLAI Fellows, the most recent being Juliana Martinelli from Brasília, Brazil in May of 2023. Samantha Snabes, re:3D’s Co-Founder and Catalyst and Juliana met over video to ensure that re:3D would be a good match for her fellowship. Juliana’s company, InovaHouse3D, 3D prints with cement and has a mission to print affordable houses in Brazil. Even though re:3D prints with plastic, we also have a social responsibility aspect to our work and admire InovaHouse3D’s goals!

Frame of the Ayla 130, InovaHouse 3D's Cement Printer

Extruder of the Ayla 130, InovaHouse 3D's Cement Printer

Juliana worked on three different projects during her Fellowship. The largest project she undertook was completing a customer outreach campaign to re:3D’s customers who spoke Spanish and Portuguese. Juliana individually contacted forty-four customers in Central and South America. She successfully heard back from twenty-five customers via email and set up in-depth phone calls with them. During these conversations, Juliana learned what each customer used their Gigabot for and the current state of their Gigabot. Juliana provided the customers with re:3D resources and connected them with other members of the re:3D team. re:3D values the relationships with our customers and the outreach Juliana did have a positive impact in connecting with customers we don’t normally get the chance to talk to. Additionally, this outreach campaign connected Juliana with more players in the Additive Manufacturing space in Latin America.

Because of Juliana’s background in Electrical Engineering, she was able to problem-solve grounding issues with Gigabot’s electrical box. This was incredibly helpful as re:3D was building up its engineering team. The final project Juliana worked on was a personal project. She wanted to pitch InoveHouse3D to a few American Investors to get their valuable feedback. Juliana was able to meet with two different Investors and strengthen her InovaHouse3D deck.

By the end of Juliana’s Fellowship, a strong connection had formed between her and the re:3D team. YLAI had let re:3D, and the other businesses hosting fellows, know that there would be an opportunity for an Outbound Exchange program. In this exchange, someone from re:3D would go to Brazil for two weeks and work with Juliana’s company. Jennifer Dennington, re:3D’s Account Manager, applied for the Outbound Exchange Program and was awarded the grant! Jennifer left for the exchange in early January 2024 to amplify the future of Additive Manufacturing in Brazil.

One of the main projects Juliana and Jennifer worked on was creating a storytelling blog post and video on re:3D’s customer Rhodes. Rhodes produces around 5 million components per year to assemble various models of office, school, and training chairs and public seats in airports, theaters, cinemas, and football stadiums. The blog article and video about how Rhodes uses its Gigabot will be published soon, so stay on the lookout for that.

Another project Jennifer and Juliana collaborated on was creating Additive Manufacturing lessons for Brazil. Jennifer’s background is in Special Education, she has a passion for making education fun and accessible to all people. Juliana teaches lessons to schoolchildren at the Planetário de Brasília (Brasília’s Planetarium) and has connections with public schools in Brasília. Before coming to Brazil, Jennifer knew she would share re:3D’s Introduction to Autodesk’s TinkerCAD lesson where Juliana would teach students how to make 3D models on their computers. However, after speaking with Juliana, Jennifer learned that many students do not have access to technology at school. Jennifer shifted gears and decided the first lesson she needed to create was an Introduction to 3D Printing lesson for students with limited to no knowledge of 3D printing and limited access to technology.

Jennifer modeled this lesson after the 5E Model of Instruction where students engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate 3D printing. She only included resources that Juliana had readily available to be used in the lesson. For example, because of Juliana’s partnership with the University of Brasília’s LAB, Juliana could bring 3D printed examples to show the students on top of having the Google Slides presentation. Click here to view and download the Introduction to 3D Printing Google Slides and here to view and download the full lesson plan.

After Jennifer finished the Introduction to 3D Printing lesson, she went back to the Introduction to TinkerCAD lesson because it is a personal favorite of re:3Ds. TinkerCAD is a fantastic resource for teachers because you don’t have to have a 3D printer to do incredible and engaging lessons with your students. Teachers will have students they do not expect to interact with this lesson get really into it and become incredible 3D designers. Not only can students make 3D designs with TinkerCAD, but also they can create circuit boards and learn how to write code, all for free! TinkerCAD puts out challenges each month for students to compete in and educators post lessons they have created on TinkerCAD as well. Click here to view and download the Introduction to TinkerCAD Google Slides and here to view and download the full lesson plan and other additional resources. These lessons can be replicated and customized to fit different cultural contexts, educational settings, and learner demographics, thereby extending the reach and impact of 3D printing education. Jennifer hopes her lessons contribute to building a future workforce equipped with valuable science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM) knowledge and competencies, thus promoting innovation and economic development in the long run.

Juliana took Jennifer on a tour of Programando o Futuro, an electronic waste (e-waste) recycling center with a broader mission of providing free technology education to the community. Their hands-on courses in robotics, 3D printing, computer repair, and marketing aim to equip people with tech skills, boasting a 55% job placement rate. With a commitment to inclusivity and sustainability, Programando o Futuro engages in extensive plastic recycling, collaborating with companies like HP to transform shredded plastic into new products or filament for their 3D printing lab. Programando o Futuro has repaired and donated over 3,000 computers and aims to recycle 1,100 tons of material this year. They want to partner with Juliana and the University of Brasília to get a spectrometer, which will help them rapidly and accurately identify the types of plastic that are donated. Additionally, Juliana wishes to use her partnership with Programando o Futuro to apply for re:3D’s Gigaprize program or apply for a grant to purchase a GigabotX 2 for their organizations.

A bonus meeting happened with Bryan Murphy, Associate Chief Engineer for the International Space Station (ISS), at Boeing to bring ISS Mini-Mimics to Brazil. The ISS MIMIC is a 1:100 scale articulating model of the International Space Station (ISS) that runs off of live data streaming from the real ISS. re:3D has had the joy of helping the ISS Mimic team by 3D printing solar arrays and participating in the 11 Freeman Library Community Builds of the ISS Mimic. If you would like to learn more about the ISS Mimic, check out this article written by re:3D. Jennifer and Juliana’s meeting with Bryan was successful because they secured three ISS Mini-Mimics for educational institutions in Brasília. The goal is that after Juliana completes the ISS Mini-Mimic with students, she will then apply for grants to fund an ISS Mimic community build at the Planetarium! She is also hoping to get support from Brazil’s only astronaut, Marcos Pontes, who is currently a Senator for São Paulo, in this endeavor. Bringing the ISS Mimic to Brazil has the potential to foster a lasting interest in space exploration and STEAM fields to all who encounter it.

A final fortuitous event happened at the end of Jennifer’s time in Brazil when she was able to meet with the 2024 Class of Brazilian YLAI Fellows. Jennifer was in Brasília at the same time as their orientation for YLAI. Juliana and Jennifer went and spoke about their YLAI experience with the Fellows for an hour and a half. The Fellows Jennifer met were awe-inspiring entrepreneurs. They have built up their business and are incredibly hard workers. When they come to the US they are paired with businesses and are partnered with anyone from the CEO of the company to an Account Manager. YLAI is not only about the Fellows coming in and learning from an American company but also about them sharing their knowledge and passion with the company they are paired with. If you are interested in hosting a YLAI Fellow, please email info@re3d.org, and Jennifer will put you in touch with the proper contacts. re:3D hopes to continue partnering with YLAI for as long as we are around.

Jennifer Dennington

Blog Post Author

ISS Mimic: a Link to the International Space Station here on Earth

When computer programmer Dallas Kidd was growing up, she wanted to be an astronomer.

“But I realized as a kid,” she said, “that I didn’t know what that meant, because I didn’t know any astronomers. So I decided I couldn’t do that.”

In high school computer programming classes, when other students were creating financial programs for banks, she again felt discouraged. She thought, “I didn’t know how to do that, so I guess I can’t have a career in this.” It took a long, circuitous journey to get where she is now. “I spent years figuring out what I wanted to do, and if someone had just been there to say, ‘Hey! I’m an astronomer,’ or ‘Hey, I’m a computer programmer. You can do this and here’s how!’ to make it real. I would have done this forever ago.”

Now an engineer at Skylark Wireless, LLC, Kidd is committed to offering those opportunities to students. Recently, she joined a special project that offers eager young learners hands-on experience in applied computer science, electrical engineering, 3d printing and mechatronics and encourages them to focus on space innovation: the ISS Mimic.

Five years ago, on the 15th anniversary of continuous human presence on the International Space Station (ISS), Boeing engineer Bryan Murphy proposed a STEM outreach project to his colleagues who work on the real space station. The idea: to create a 1% scale model of the ISS, complete with moving parts, that mimics in real-time the telemetry data of the space station that circles the earth every 90 minutes.

Murphy wasn’t the only one in the group who had discovered that NASA was constantly broadcasting live, publicly available data from ISS back to earth via ISS Live. The vast collection of data, including details on battery levels, solar array rotations, air lock pressure, and much more was available for anyone to use. Murphy and his teammates figured: why not bring the station down to earth in a desk-sized model that anyone could interact with? They decided to go for it.

Boeing is the prime contractor for the ISS. For over two decades, Boeing’s ISS team has provided round-the-clock operational support, ensuring that the full value of the world’s most unique and capable research laboratory is available to NASA, its international partners, other U.S. government agencies and private companies. So, for three and a half years following the conception of the ISS Mimic, the off-hours project progressed slowly alongside the engineers’ work supporting the space station and the mind-blowing scientific achievements emerging onboard. The primary project goals were keeping cost and complexity down to be educator friendly while maintaining the essence of ISS.

"...that was the major obstacle that inspired us to either give up the project or fight with everything, with all of our arsenal, to get it refunded."

Sam Treadgold

ISS Mimic steadily took shape, but it wasn’t until February of 2019 before they felt it was ready for public demonstration. They took ISS Mimic to a local high school to show students the moving model. But something was wrong. The live data stream – that important information ISS Mimic relied on to represent its big sister in the sky – had disappeared. “Everything worked until we got there[to the school], and we were like, ‘what’s going on?,’” recalled Craig Stanton, Murphy’s fellow Boeing engineer and ISS Mimic teammate. Without the data, they couldn’t demonstrate the live syncing, but could still show off the mechanics, control screen, LEDs, and 3D printed parts, so in true fail-forward fashion, they pressed on.

The interest from teachers and students was palpable. Though they’d done some small in-house show-and-tells, “it was the first time for us to take it anywhere,” shared Murphy. “For me, it was very motivational to finally be out there.” The team knew they wanted to move forward and get ISS Mimic in the hands of more teachers and students, but what had happened to the data from ISS Live?

The team went searching for answers, and the news was not good. Sam Treadgold of Boeing’s ISS team phrased it succinctly, “ISS Live got defunded – the public NASA telemetry suddenly shut down, and that was the major obstacle that inspired us to either give up the project or fight with everything, with all of our arsenal, to get it refunded.”

They thought the project was toast. It would have taken a major decision from NASA leadership to reverse the funding decision, but the tenacious team wasn’t ready to give up. They contacted everyone they knew who had vested interest in the STEM engagement and outreach benefits of the now defunct program. After a string of touches with decision makers, a fateful meeting with William Harris, the CEO of Space Center Houston, the public visitor center next to NASA-Johnson Space Center, brought forth Harris’ support, and the collective efforts were enough to get the funding restored. The data stream turned back on.

“Once we passed that hurdle, it was like the floodgates opened. Let’s go. Let’s do it!” shared Susan Freeman, who also supports Boeing’s space station program. ISS’s 20th anniversary was approaching, and NASA was interested in promoting the project to encourage public interest in ISS. The ISS Mimic itself was in a development state that it could visualize interesting changes on ISS in real time. “One of the data values is the pressure in the U.S. airlock. We monitor that data so our program can recognize when a spacewalk is happening,” said Treadgold, “ Last year, when a hole formed in one of the Russian vehicles, the pressure in the whole ISS started dropping, and our lights started flashing [on ISS Mimic]. There wasn’t a spacewalk going on, and we were aware of the leak.”

“That’s not usually publicly known when that’s happening. It’s usually announced a few days later when NASA makes the public report,” shared Stanton, “but this way, you’re looking at the live data stream, and all of a sudden, you’re just as in the know as the people in the operations room. How cool is that for people and kids at home!”

And it was becoming more than just an outreach project, they were discovering that this scale model was helping them understand the work they were doing on the real space station with more insight and more collaborative understanding of the challenges and quirks of the flying football-field sized spacecraft. “ISS is massive,” said Freeman, “I know only these tiny little pieces. That in itself is a humbling thing, to realize and accept that I’m not expected to know all of this vehicle. There is so much work done on ISS, and a lot of time you’re so focused on your little, tiny detail, that you don’t necessarily know what else is going on around you.”

Boeing’s Chen Deng, whose day job focuses on supporting the experiments on ISS, explained looking at ISS Mimic helped cut through misunderstanding about thermal needs of payloads. “By looking at [ISS Mimic], we realized it was at an angle where the payload was not getting any of the sunlight needed to keep its warmth or input from the station itself, and that really helped.”

The ISS Mimic team is in the process of building a second model for Boeing’s internal team in charge of “pointing” the solar arrays. The ISS Mimic can rotate its solar arrays 60 time faster than the actual space station, allowing the engineers to test and visualize their code before using it on the real thing. ISS Mimic can also “replay” previously collected data engineers use to assess and understand anomalies. “This is better than numbers on a screen or even CAD animations,” reflected Treadgold. “You see this and know exactly what’s happening.”

But beyond the functional model, of which they’ve replicated 80-90% of ISS, the team wants to use ISS Mimic to make the interface intuitive, easy to understand and exciting to build for students. To make it so easy to pick up that it’s like a LEGO build, and so inviting that it draws people in to an interest in science or space. “The hardest part to get right is STEM outreach,“ shared Doug Kimble of Boeing’s ISS team. “We need to get more students involved and excited about ISS. We need future astronauts; we need future female astronauts. We need more kids excited about STEM, and science and math, and this is one of the ways we can do it.” Showing students that the robots they’re crashing into each other in competitions use the same encoders, the same programming, the same motor drivers that are on the ISS Mimic makes it accessible and reinforces for students their own capabilities.

“We want these ISS Mimic models everywhere, in every airport, in every museum, in every school. Big dream,” declares Freeman.

“So people can see that they’re capable of this,” explains Murphy, “and have a real chance to play in this domain. It’s a means to let every disadvantaged kid know they can do this stuff, tinker in this field and see if they may want to turn this into more than a hobby one day.” It circles back to Kidd’s experience with a lack of role models. If the team can introduce the ISS Mimic to a student who hadn’t been exposed to the space program before, they might spark an interest the student didn’t even know was there. It might just set them on a path to a career which, for the members of the ISS Mimic team, is challenging, thrilling, and celebrates humanity’s greatest collaboration.

The ISS Mimic team includes:
Chen Deng
Susan Freeman
Dallas Kidd
Doug Kimble
Bryan Murphy
Craig Stanton
Sam Treadgold

Want to volunteer? ISS Mimic is looking for programmers, 3D modelers & educators to join the team! Reach out to them at:
email: iss.mimic@gmail.com
fb: https://www.facebook.com/ISS.mimic/
ig: https://www.instagram.com/iss_mimic/
twitter: https://twitter.com/ISS_Mimic
discord: https://discord.gg/34ftfJe

re:3D offers 3D printed ISS Mimic parts available at shop.re3d.org

Charlotte craff

Blog Post Author

boeing Community Education educators gigabot International Space Station ISS Mimic issMIMIC nasa Raspberry Pi space STEM

Teaching for STEM Success in High School with a 3D Printing Curriculum

CJ Bryant has done a lot of thinking about success.

“One of the things I’ve discovered over the years is, success is something that can be taught. You don’t wake up in the morning and you’re successful. Somebody teaches you how to be successful.”

He’s in the position of being the shepherd of success for young people who have previously struggled with it in the classroom setting. Bryant is the Technology Coordinator at the Phoenix School in Roseburg, Oregon, a charter school for students who weren’t flourishing academically in the standard high school environment. “All the students here were at risk at one time of academic failure,” he explains.

All this changes when they reach Bryant’s classroom.

A Hands-on Approach

The learning that happens under Bryant’s watch is project-based and hands-on, and, often unbeknownst to the students, supplementing the work they’re doing in other courses.

“This room is 100% mathematics,” he explains.

Bryant’s classroom looks like a hybrid computer lab – machine shop. One half is lined with desks and monitors; the other, filled with equipment: a vinyl cutter, laser cutter, drone, foundry, and 3D printer.

The hands-on approach is Bryant’s way of getting through to students for whom learn-by-doing may click where formulas in a textbook fall short.

“[The students] will come down here after being in a math class and they’ll just be really frustrated,” he explains. “And you’re like, ‘Wait a second, why is geometry bothering you? You’re doing geometry in this CAD drawing. This is geometry.’”

Bryant has found that the real-world approach resonates with students, giving them tangible, tactile applications of the information they’re studying in other classes. “This is where math becomes real and applicable. It’s what makes math real and important. It’s not just some formula on a board that you have to memorize.”

Baby Spoons and Chess Pieces

As the head of the school’s technology program, 3D printing was naturally on Bryant’s radar early-on.

He wanted a workhorse machine that could handle a constant stream of projects from his classroom: both large, singular pieces as well as bulk batches of student projects. He quickly found himself disappointed.

“I started looking for 3D printers and all there were these little tiny ones on the market, and that was useless,” he explains.

He began attending 3D printing meet-ups to gain a better sense of the landscape and hopefully pick up some printer recommendations. “I probably went to five or six workshops on 3D printing, and they would have these tiny little things there,” he lamented. His frustration mounted.

“In the last one I went to I said, ‘Okay, other than baby spoons and chess pieces, what can you make with this?’”

Bryant took his search online and stumbled across the original re:3D Kickstarter page. At that point the campaign was long over, but it led Bryant to re:3D, and thus to Gigabot.

“I went to my boss and I said, ‘We need this.’”

Building a Bot

Bryant’s boss bit, and shortly thereafter his students found themselves elbow-deep in the project of assembling a Gigabot parts kit.

“That was our first fun project with it,” Bryant muses. The learning experience of building the machine from start to finish was incredibly valuable for students, as they came to understand how the components work together on an intimate level.

Their next fun project came from the school’s art teacher, who approached Bryant and asked if he could print a classical face for drawing students to use as a practice model. Bryant and his students downloaded a 3D scan of the Smithsonian’s marble bust of Augustus Caesar and pressed print on their Gigabot.

As their first major print, they were still getting the feel for best print settings, and so the head weighs a hefty several pounds. “It took five, six days,” says Bryant, “but it turned out fantastic.” They learned to dial down the infill on future prints.

From Classroom Success to Real-World Wins

The Phoenix School Gigabot has been kept busy on a wide variety of projects since.

“One of the things that we wanted the 3D printer for was robotics,” explains CJ. He is unimpressed by the robotics kits often sold to high schools. “Everything’s already in there. There’s nothing to imagine: you put the kit together and you end up with the robot that you bought the kit for. I don’t want to do that.”

He wants a challenge for his students, something that pushes their creativity and problem-solving skills. “I want to come up with a task and then design a robot to fit the task,” he says. “With the Gigabot, we can print the arms, we can print the gears…everything we need, we can print. It opens the door to custom-built robotics, so we can design a robot to do whatever we want the robot to do.”

It’s clear what is on the top of Bryant’s mind as he builds his lesson plans. Woven into the fabric of every project in his classroom is the common thread of success; specifically, making sure he sets his students up for it.

Bryant views success as a teachable, stepping stone path that he very deliberately guides students down.

“At one point in time, we had our first big success. We had our ‘Aha!’ moment where we realized, ‘Hey, I can do that,’” he explains. “We learned, we experienced success, and success becomes a ladder to a successful future. You’ve got to start somewhere.”

For Bryant, the first step comes in the form of a 3D printed luggage tag/dog tag. “One of the reasons I have them make this…is most of the skills that they will need to use the CAD program for are wrapped up in this dog tag.” Within the project is a foundation of expertise that his students will continue to build on: a variety of CAD features, uniqueness (each student designs a tag with their own name on it), and operating a 3D printer to bring them to life.

“With our student population, a lot of our students have never experienced success academically before,” he explains. “So you give them a project that they can do. I won’t tell you they can’t fail – they have to work pretty hard at it – but you give them a project and you make sure that they succeed.”

Bryant sets his students up: he has a video tutorial for the students to follow along with as they design, and it’s common to see students helping each other, popping over to others’ computers to lend a hand when needed. At the end of it, each student gets to take home a trophy in the form of their very own personalized, 3D printed name tag.

“Their next project is a bit more difficult,” he explains, “but they have the tools and the recent success to build on.” The carrot in the form of more 3D printed goodies to take home probably doesn’t hurt either.

But Bryant is not interested only in achievement inside the classroom. “We’re interested in not just academic success, we’re interested in student success. It’s the whole piece,” he explains.

The apex of this is the fact that his classroom takes abstract concepts and turns them into concrete, real-world applications. Geometry becomes CAD, which becomes an object a student can hold in their hand, which becomes a job opportunity.

Bryant recalled a recent story: he was talking to the manager of a local business when he mentioned where he worked. “He stopped and he goes, ‘That new girl that works for us. She’s from the Phoenix School.’” Bryant recognized her name, a now-graduated student of his.

“He goes, ‘Man, do you have any more?’”

An Offer for Fellow Educators

Bryant has seen the school’s investment in 3D printing pay off for their students, and he’s learned some lessons along the path to where he is now.

His advice for other teachers looking to convince their schools to make a similar investment?

“Have a direction that you want to go with the 3D printer.” He’s asked teachers from other schools what they would want to do with one, and sometimes gets vague answers along the lines of, “Well, anything. Just think of everything we could print.”

They’re not wrong, he explains, but it helps the acquisition process to have a concrete proposal in place. “Have a direction you want to go with your 3D printer. Make a plan, even if it’s kind of out there a little bit. ‘If we had a 3D printer, we could…’ and fill in the blank.”

Bryant sees CAD and the doors it opens as the 21st century shop class. “We’re getting a whole different group of kids and we’re exposing them to this form of technology, and we’re doing more and more with it in the workplace. Ergo, we need to train the kids.”

He believes in it so much so that he has an offer for any teachers out there seeing his story.

“If you need lesson plans, call me. I’ll give you my lesson plans. You won’t be the first I’ve given them to and you won’t be the last, but I’ll give away my lesson plans for the first year. I think that much of this of this technology. My lesson plans are yours and I’ll talk you through them.”

All the work is worth it, as other educators will likely understand, to see the lightbulb turn on for students who may have previously been feeling their way through school in the dark.

“That’s what keeps this job fun and exciting,” Bryant smiles. The students are often very skeptical when they first enter his classroom, and then something clicks.

“By the time they’ve been in the program for a year or so, it’s, ‘Do you think we could?’ Then they start asking the real important two questions; ‘Why not?’ and ‘What if?’ And that’s the beauty of the 3D printer. I think 3D printing is only limited by our imagination at this point.”

Are you a teacher who would like to take CJ up on his lesson plan offer? Send him an email at cjbryant [at] roseburgphoenix.com

Morgan Hamel

Blog Post Author

Education high school STEM teachers

Grand Opening of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering Veterans Future Lab

On Monday of this week I had the privilege of attending the Grand Opening of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering Veterans Future Lab in Brooklyn, New York.

A very special lineup of speakers graced the event, including New York State Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul, Dean of Engineering at NYU Katepalli Sreenivasan, New York State Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, Barclays Group Chief Executive Officer Jes Staley, and one of the the engineering school’s namesakes, business-leader and humanitarian Chandrika Tandon.

Housed in Industry City on Brooklyn’s “Innovation Coastline,” the lab will be an early-stage startup incubator for United States military veterans.

More than a third of all returning military veterans have entrepreneurial ambitions, speakers at the event remarked, but just under 5% launch their own businesses, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With some 18 million veterans in the country, that’s a lot of unrealized business ideas.

Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul told a story about a moment that left a profound impression on her on a visit she made to an American military base in Afghanistan. Sitting around a table with a group of soldiers, she asked them about their greatest fears. And in that tent in the barren, almost lunarscape-esque terrain of Afghanistan, in the heart of Taliban territory, the soldiers’ response stunned her. They were worried about finding a job when they returned home.

The Veterans Future Lab addresses exactly this fear.

The goal of the program is to provide business support and mentorship to a group of people who have given so much to serve their country, to enable them to be successful in this next mission in their lives.

With their first round of 15 companies starting in January, the program will offer participants 12 months of incubation, mentorship with New York City industry professionals and NYU faculty, and free legal services, among many more benefits.

One of the other perks of the program is the makerspace.

The businesses will have access to a bona fide buffet of prototyping equipment, from laser jets to water jets, injection machines to sewing machines, and – you guessed it – a Gigabot (among a list of other 3D printers).

As a veteran-owned company ourselves, we couldn’t be more excited to have a Gigabot available to the participants.

Split between the NYU Tandon School of Engineering Makerspace in Downtown Brooklyn and the Veterans Future Lab offices in Industry City, any physical design and prototyping needs the entrepreneurs may have are covered from all angles.

A big deal for not only veterans but also the city and state of New York as a whole, the lab was made possible with the support of Barclays and the Empire State Development Corporation.

As Lieutenant Governor Hochul put it, “This is a very good day in the state of New York.”

Morgan Hamel

Blog Post Author

3D print 3d printer 3d printing Business early-stage startup Education engineer engineering entrepreneur fab lab fabrication lab gigabot incubator makerspace new york university NYU NYU Tandon School of Engineering NYU Tandon School of Engineering Veterans Future Lab NYU Veterans Future Lab prototype prototyping startup startup incubator STEAM STEM tandon Tandon School of Engineering United States Military university US Military US Military Veterans veteran veterans Veterans Future Lab

Why 3D Printing is Such a Game-Changer for Syracuse University

In this final installment of the Syracuse University ITS Makerspace video series, John nails down exactly what makes 3D printing so powerful.

This is a technology that enables.

From businesses to schools, established corporations to garage entrepreneurs, 3D printing allows a mere idea to become something physical. A hazy vision becomes a tangible item that can be held, touched, poked, prodded, and ultimately, sent back to the drawing board and printed again.

All this without ever having to contract out to a third party to tool up a prototype. The entire design and iteration process can be done in-house, affordably and rapidly.

John encompasses the entire spectrum in one – he’s the at-home handyman and tinkerer, while at the same time an educator managing a university makerspace that serves a student body of around 20,000. He sees the potential for this technology through both of these lenses, making his point of view a particularly interesting one.

And from his point of view, 3D printing is a game-changer.

Morgan Hamel

Blog Post Author

3d printing Education entrepreneuer prototype STEM university

Books & Bots: The Lab in the Library

Clear Lake City, a community in the Bay Area of Greater Houston, is a name you might not immediately recognize, but it’s the site of a couple things you probably will.

Most notably the home of the historic NASA Johnson Space Center, its Mission Control can be picked out in famous scenes from the 1969 moon landing or movies like Apollo 13 and The Martian. It’s the Houston in “Houston, we have a problem.”

Also not to be forgotten in Clear Lake’s list of places you’d know is our very own office.

Just down the street from the re:3D Houston office is another place putting Clear Lake on the map for technological innovation, one which you might not expect: the Clear Lake City-County Freeman Branch Library.

“This all started back in 2013 when we were notified that the library was named in a will: Mr. Jocelyn H. Lee’s, whose name is on the lab.”

Jim Johnson, Branch Manager of the library, explains how there came to be a tech innovation lab — complete with laser cutter and multiple 3D printers — in the middle of a library in Clear Lake.

“We had no expectation as to how much he might have left us. Once we did find out, I fell out of my chair. It was about $134,000.”

Evolving to Survive

The library as an institution has defied odds in the face of technology. Fighting the battle against obsolescence, libraries have made it through multiple threats to their livelihood, their survival owed to the nimbleness of their leadership.

“Largely because of technology, libraries, especially public libraries, have had to constantly adapt,” Jim explains. “Once computers became more prevalent and the internet started making headway, libraries as a rule had to adapt in order to stay alive, and not merely just for the sake of staying relevant, but staying relevant to what’s important to people in the way that they acquire information.”

The unexpected and extremely generous donation was an opportunity for the library to do just that.

“We started looking at some trends out there in public libraries around the country and found that makerspaces were beginning to catch interest in communities. Being such a strong engineering community in Houston — from aerospace to chemical — we thought that we probably had the space here to do that kind of thing. We didn’t really see how we could lose if we did it right.”

So they got to work, repurposing the library’s Quiet Room — “It’s hard to imagine a quiet room being needed in a library,” Jim adds — to accommodate some heavier machinery than most libraries are used to having. Next on the list was finding the right person to head the lab.

From Tinkering to Training

“I was a stay-at-home dad before this.”

Patrick Ferrell was the man brought on for the job of Innovation Lab Trainer. “Before a year ago, the library was a place I brought the kids for storytime. I had never touched a 3D printer until after I found out I got this job.”

A natural tinkerer and hobbyist, Patrick’s professional background in mechanical engineering and physics lent itself well to what the library was looking to do. He now organizes and leads classes on everything from basic circuits and programming to robotics and structure-building with marshmallows and spaghetti.

“Whatever it looks like we need to do in order to cater to the audience we have,” he explains. “Since we’re the only space like this in the county system — and all of Southeast Texas as far as I know — I have a fair bit of latitude and freedom in what kind of classes we offer. Whatever I think looks like fun is what we do. If other people think it looks like fun too, then they come in and we keep offering it.”

His tactics have been working. As Jim put it, “Any success that the space has had is really largely due to Patrick’s influence.”

Walk into the lab and you’ll see what it’s all about. The walls are lined with eye-catching machinery and class creations. A “Cardboardosaurus” T-rex head hangs above their Gigabot in one corner; in another is an outer-space-themed piece of art made entirely using filament from abandoned and failed 3D prints, the masterpiece of one very creative library shelving assistant. Tribute to the original tech influence of the area you can find several NASA-themed 3D prints around the room, among them a several-foot-tall rocket and a model of the Orion space capsule. The laser cutter was my personal favorite — intricate wood, paper, and cardboard portraits adorned the wall next to the machine — proving that two-dimensions can still be cool.

Trend-Following to Trend-Setting

The recent boom in interest in desktop 3D printers allowed the library to tap into the trend and retain its relevancy in the community by getting several printers for the lab.

With a Gigabot in addition to two desktop-sized Makerbot Replicators, they also have the advantage of boasting a print volume unmatched by many local makerspaces. Because of this, they often get called on when a project has hit the size ceiling at another facility.

One of Patrick’s favorite projects so far was one by a local Houston teenager, Nicholas. He had been working with Techno Chaos, a local makerspace, the director of which knew that the library had a Gigabot.

“The director, Mike, called me up and said, ‘I’ve got this kid who’s designed a Freddy Fazbear costume and we’ve printed it on the MakerBot, but he wants to make it full-size. Do you think you could help him?’”

It was the longest print the library had taken on at the time.

“Just the head of the costume was a 44 hour print. But Nicholas was passionate about the project, and his persistence and perseverance enabled him to complete the entire thing successfully.”

What’s made it all worth it for Patrick is seeing success stories like Nicholas’s. “His parents would come in and say, ‘It’s good to see him excited about this kind of thing.’ Finding some outlet for him to be creative in that way was really great. Seeing him so excited, that’s what made it all so rewarding for me.”

And the sentiment is catching.

Patrick told the story of how Nicholas displayed his large-scale print at his booth at the local maker faire. “The director of the Harris County Public Library system was really impressed with his project. When it came time for budget talks, Nicholas and his dad went before the county commissioner’s court to say, ‘This is why libraries are important. This gives our son a place to go to use tools like this.’ The commissioners then asked, ‘How can I get one of these in my precinct?’ They see someone like Nicholas who’s passionate about this, excited about it, and they want to give more young people access to it.”

Challenges on the Front Lines of Innovation

Jim and Patrick have seen firsthand what doors the Innovation Lab has opened for the local community, and they understand the value that technologies like 3D printers can bring to the right people.

“Schools are starting to have the smaller printers, so if you’re doing a school project, that’s great,” Patrick explains. “But if you’re doing a personal project, then you’re kind of out of luck. You’re either sending your file off to Shapeways and paying outrageous amounts, or you have to find someone on Hubs, but it’s really hard to find somewhere that can print at the scale of what’s possible on Gigabot.”

On top of large-scale printing, there is another big selling point that sets the Innovation Lab apart from similar spaces in the area and around the country.

“What’s special about our makerspace is that we don’t charge dues or membership fees,” says Patrick. “The only thing you’re paying for is the material you use.”

The fact that the space remains open and accessible to the community is a core tenet of the library. The creative potential there is seemingly limitless — the machinery they have on hand coupled with its accessibility is a recipe for unbridled innovation. But being the first to tread through this territory means the library is crossing bridges as they go; the excitement of being on the front lines of innovation comes hand-in-hand with its challenges.

One thing they’ve encountered is the gap between the public’s general expectation of 3D printing and the reality of the technology.

“I don’t know, you mean I have to design it myself? Can’t you just design it for me? I have a picture, can’t we use that? What if I sketch it out on a piece of paper? I found this picture on the internet, is that good enough?” Patrick runs through the common questions he gets from some people when they first come in to 3D print. “Once we get over that hurdle, then people are more interested and they’ll start printing.”

Another thing they struggle with is demand for large-scale 3D printing, due in part to the gimmicky phase that desktop 3D printing is going through.

“Many people who come in are printing little trinkets. It satisfies the ‘Hey look, I 3D printed something’ desire, and they don’t need to go further,” says Patrick.

People are still figuring out how they can use 3D printing to make something practical. The intent in creating Gigabot was to serve just that purpose: a 3D printer at a scale large enough to print practical, real-world objects rather than just small trinkets.

Patrick speculates that the intimidation factor of the sheer size of a large-scale 3D printer adds to this tendency to avoid Gigabot in favor of their desktop printers. With a steep learning curve for 3D printing in general, expanding the build volume several orders of magnitude certainly can complicate things.

This is something that may prove to be the biggest challenge for libraries looking to open internal makerspaces: how do you tap into and attract the group of people who have a genuine need and use for these technologies? A long-term sustainable plan may not be able to rely on a stream of one-time visitors only there to print their name on a keychain and check a box on their bucket list, not to return again.

What spaces like this need are superusers, people who will return week after week, month after month, because they have a practical use for the machinery.

Lessons Learned for Libraries

At re:3D, we talk to a lot of people — inventors, entrepreneurs, tinkerers — with a clear use for large-scale 3D printing, but a lack of a budget with which to get one. To have access to a space where the only cost is a material fee would be the difference between bringing a product to market and never having the idea leave the drawing board.

A big reason 3D printing has flourished as a tool for businesses is its knack for prototyping. Companies can eliminate the need for third-party designers and injection mold do-overs, saving sizable chunks of time and money in the design and prototyping process. With a 3D printer, you could have a prototype made for as much money as it costs to do a few loads of laundry at the laundromat, in nearly the same amount of time. As Patrick explains, “Gigabot is great for designing a prototype which you want to market or show off to investors.”

Because of this, referrals have been a boon to the library, allowing them to offer their equipment to exactly these kinds of people: the garage entrepreneurs with plenty of ideas but not a lot of ways to make them a reality. Local makerspaces like the one that referred Nicholas — as well as the Houston Inventor’s Association, which also sends people their way who want to print big prototypes — have started to get the word out to their user bases.

In the meantime, the library is forging their own path in this new era of how communities interact with their local libraries. Jim is walking proof of the open and innovative mindset that must come with the librarian territory.

“I think that libraries are more about information and knowledge — a place to keep it and a place to use it — and I think makerspaces are a place to use information that you acquire. This is part of the reason why I think this is an excellent fit for libraries and allows them to remain relevant, not just for the sake of staying relevant, but as a practical place to learn something by doing. I think that hopefully, if other libraries catch on to this, you can easily have libraries remaining relevant not only as a place to absorb and acquire information, but also to use it in a practical way.

“This has changed my perspective on libraries being only about books.”

Do you or someone you know live in the area? Go check out the Jocelyn H. Lee Innovation Lab on the second floor of the Clear Lake City-County Freeman Branch Library.

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