My first encounter with 3D Printing
When I first heard about 3D printing, I was in my second semester of sophomore year. One of my professors for a communications class I was enrolled in said he would be teaching a class on 3D printing in the fall of the next semester. That’s when I became hooked and wanted to learn as much as I could about this new concept. Being able to find an object online, click on it, and print it was one of those things that I had to see it to believe it.
Because of a poor pick time, I did originally did not get into the class on selection day. A day before the drop/add period ended, a spot opened up in the class and I quickly enrolled in it. It was a Tuesday/Thursday class—on Tuesdays we would learn about the history of communication and different tools that were used to communicate, and on Thursdays we would be able to come to class and attempt to print something that we picked out earlier in the week. Notice the keyword: “attempt.”
I remember the first day where we got to print something I came into class expecting to leave with a fully functioning iPhone case. Needless to say, I left with a keychain (pictured to the right). Not aware of the specifics and technical aspects of 3D printing, I believed I was going to go in class, click the file that I downloaded the night before, and print it within minutes—I was totally wrong.
Besides all of the technical specifications (that I will explain in a future post) that had to be sorted out before we started printing, we only had 4 printers for the entire class to use so everyone didn’t have an hour and fifteen minutes to work on their print. Some of the prints that people came in with (including myself) took too long to print, so we had to find new ones that we would be able to get done within class time.
Regardless of the object that I left class with, the idea of leaving class with a physical object that I didn’t walk in with amazed me. I remember getting home and trying to explain the class to my parents over the phone and they were totally lost. My mom was curious to know more about what the printer was and my dad asked me if you needed 3D glasses to look at the picture when it came out—like really that’s what he asked me. He couldn’t seem to grasp the concept of an actual object being printed.
This was my first experience with 3D printing; it only gets better (actually worse—sort of) from here!