John Marshall Students Get Trained to Use a 3D Printer



Grant Michel from 1st Maker Space trains John Marshall Students to use a 3D printer

 

Through a grant provided by the Central Indianapolis Community Foundation for entrepreneurship and financial literacy, John Marshall Community High School was able to purchase a 3D printer to start their own maker space.

Grant Michel, a liberal arts major, from http://www.1stmakerspace.com/ delivered the 3D printer, and provided the training.  Together students made a chip clip from downloading a file from http://www.thingiverse.com/.

It took about 6 minutes for the chip clip to “print.”

The next step was to create their own projects.  Using https://www.tinkercad.com/ students created a name tag.

The 3D printer incorporates elements of manufacturing and design to include: geometry, computer programming, computer hardware development, CAD software techniques.  Students learn how y=mx+b, the slope-intercept formula actually comes to life as they plot points on the y-axis, x-axis, and an additional z-axis needed for 3D printing.

The 3D printer uses .stl files, which are like .pdf files, but pdf is two dimensional and stl is three dimensional.

If you take a photo in a .jpg format and need to convert it to and SVG (scalable vector graphic, you can do so using http://picsvg.com/.

Grant written by:  Christina Shepard

Blog entry by: Christina Shepard