Hi this is Darby.  Today I am going to talk about our experience at FSA [Fulton Science Academy].

This all started when my mom, Amie, wanted to start an after school program about 3D printing.

Both of my parents started to research schools that might be interested in this program…. One day my dad had an idea of a school that might be just what we needed. Since my Dad, Doug, is familiar with the school he researches it and calls the school to see if they might be interested.

It was the perfect time to call because they had something special planed for the upcoming month of May. On Friday May, 3 they are having STEM Day, my dad told me, and they said that we could be one of the exhibits.

My brother, Avery and I were both exited and scared. All the things that we’ve been planning for where finally coming true. This was our family’s first chance to get involved in the public!

On Thursday night we started to pack all of our things together. We planned out what we were going to say, Avery told about the parts of the 3D printer and what cool stuff we’ve made, my mom gave a presentation on how to use a CAD program, my Dad was the entertainer and the main speaker, and I showed the students our blog.

We had the whole entire thing planned out, but the question was were we ready for the big day….  After a beneficial night sleep we all came down stairs for nutritious breakfast. We were so eager to get to the school that when we were all done setting up we had to wait for about 2 hours till the first class got there. So in the mean time we met some parents that came in and explained what we were doing and why were there.  We also did a practice run for what we were going to be printing that day. When the first class finally came in we all were a little nervous.

But eventually we got the flow of the presentation after a while. The first class where elementary kids, they didn’t really get the fact that the happy-sad coin turned happy when it was done.

The middle school classes got it a lot better than the younger kids, I was relieved to have kids that were a little more close to my age. One of the surprising things was only two students had seen a 3D printer in person.

Only a few of the students knew what a CAD program was.

There were lots of interesting questions like, how much is it, how long do the creations take to print, and a clever question was how many polygons are in the Yoda we had on display.

When it was all done we packed up all of our things and put them in the car outside.  This day was a learning opportunity for all of us, my mom said, you will be much more comfortable now with people older than you or even your peers.  After, all the family wanted was to have a satisfying dinner and a chance to relax!!

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We experimented with lighting the clear filament with a battery-powered closet LED light.  We created the box in Tinkercad (RIP) and the PrintrBot logo in Cubify Invent.  It is now up in Thingiverse here:   http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:74528

Avery also made a drum stick holder.  This holder will proudly display all of his well used drumsticks on the wall behind his drum set. He designed it entirely by himself.

One more puzzle:

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Hi there blog viewers…this is Darby and Avery’s Mom. I have never written a blog on their site, but something very exciting happened in our 3D printing adventure that I had to boast about on their blog.

A local reporter/writer, J. Copsey, from our newspaper, The Revue & News, contacted us about doing an article on the kids and our 3D printing experience. I am so very proud of my kiddos because they worked so hard on this project with our family! Darby and Avery did the entire interview with the reporter and even educated him on the new technology. They showed him the process of how to design a 3D model in our CAD program, slice the object into layers, and then send the information to the printer to run the plastic filament to make the 3D print. The kids also described the mechanics of the 3D printer and how each motor, gear, extruder, and axis work together to make a 3D print. As you have read prior to this blog, that the kids built the entire machine from parts we purchased from Printrbot (the best 3D printer company if you ask me ),so they knew everything the reporter had questions about it. Can you tell I am really a proud mama?!?!

Another proud moment that has not been mentioned is that Darby and Avery invested $50 each of their own money in this 3D printing en devour. When we started this family project their father asked if they wanted to pay for some of the printer and without him even finishing the sentence they said an unanimous…”YES!!!” Also to mention the time investment that they put in along with all their other activities, school, and chores. I foresee an engineer and writer in their futures’!

I also wanted to thank all the blog views and tweets that the kids have been getting from all around the world. Each of you in every country have been a blessing and an encouragement to my kids. You have made them endure when the project got tough and persevere when they needed to accomplish the next step. So to each of you around the world…

Thanks…Merci…¡gracias…谢谢…tak…Grazie…Danke…Bedankt…Děkuji…ありがとう…спасибо

The amazing newspaper article can be seen on the attached website listing -

http://www.northfulton.com/Articles-TOP-STORIES-c-2013-03-27-198024.114126-sub-Kids-make-own-toys-using-3D-printing.html

Here is a snapshot of the article…notice it was on the FRONT page!!!

Post by: One Proud Mama

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Hi this is Avery, we have not posted our latest creations in a while because we have been busy printing! Today I’m going to tell you about our recent creations.

Above,we made a vase and put a candle in it  for some friends that came over.It was the hardest thing we have made!

In the right picture above we made holders for our settlements, cities, and roads.(In Catan) On the left we built a holder for the cards!(It’s very useful)

In this picture I am holding one of the puzzles we made. It didn’t come out as we hoped, and we had to sand some of the pieces.  The 2 puzzles below turned out much better and were a lot of fun to solve.

We made a huge castle which took a few hours to complete.  It came out great, but it has some mess ups on it. The things we need to work on is we need to make the printer bot jr. stop glopping and making little warts.

The story on these lockets are that we had some friends over and we showed them how it worked.

The love bell we built is very fragile, but thats the only problem.

One cool thing about a 3d printer is it can make replacement parts for itself.  We printed this gear for the x axis pulley that broke.

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This is a quick analysis of the quality of print before and after some printer upgrades.  Speaking as the Dad, I have enjoyed the learning journey more than I imagined. Click images for full size.

The 2 main upgrades which led to a higher quality of print was a reduced nozzle size (0.35mm vs. 0.4mm – thanks Printrbot!), and an 8M metric Z axis rod which eliminated much of the Z axis ribbing.  The white Yoda was the old at 0.3mm layer height, the new Yoda is the green one printed at a layer height of 0.2mm.

On some areas you really have to look to see the layers – quite remarkable really for such a small little printer.

You can see the warts on the head of the white Yoda – I adjusted the retraction settings to 2 in Slic3r which all but eliminated this issue.

The layers are very even on the green Yoda as you can see in the detail on the back of the head.  I still have the old Makerbot 50002 X axis motor which vibrates as it steps.  I am hoping that when I upgrade that motor the tiny vibration spots on the layers will be eliminated.

The ears were still giving us a problem.  The plastic was curling up at the top even with a fan cooling it.  I assume if I slowed the print way down this would be less of an issue.

The final product:  Nightlight Yoda!  He has a small LED light inside.  It was a very fun project to work on.

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Hi this is Darby again and I am going to talk to you about my families table of shame. This is a tradition that my family does whenever a print goes bad. For instance, my dad usually knows when a print looks bad even if the Printrbot Jr. is still working on the object. If the whole family is there watching we usually notice pretty quickly too so we all say that’s going on the table of shame….

Now this is not a one time thing, this happens ALL THE TIME!!! We have had jams, things have broke, letters where messed up, or the Printrbot Jr. was infilling to much,and even X axis stopping…. But we muttered through all of it.

Sometimes failing can be a great learning opportunity. I play piano and I know how it feels. Whenever I am assigned a new song I fail a lot to finally get it right! Or when I have a test and I get a bad grade on it then I usually go over it with my parents, and after I know all the answers for following grades…. All in all, it’s good to fail sometimes and you can always learn from your mistakes!  In fact, sometimes failure can be quite beautiful as in the below example.

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Today I am sharing with you the TWO types of filament and what some peoples comments are about them. The 2 most popular types of filamet are PLA and ABS. PLA stands for Polylactic Acid, and ABS stands for Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene.

After some research I have seen a lot of differences between these two filaments. This is the websites name is Tridprinting and the articles name is “Compare 3D Printer PLA and ABS Filament”.

PLA

• More brittle than ABS
• Can droop if it gets too hot, for example, if it is left in a hot car in the summer time
• Usually turns white along the high stress zone when it is bent, then breaks into lots of little pieces
• Even though it is made from plants, it may contain dyes and binders which are not food safe
• Smells sweet when it is being printed
• Strength is relatively equal to ABS

ABS

• Impact resistant and tough
• Hard
• Glossy
• Petroleum based
• Flammable
• Prone to cracking if cooled too quickly
• Usually bends before it breaks
• Has a strong, toxic smell when it is being printed
• Strength is relatively equal to PLA

http://www.tridprinting.com/Compare-PLA-ABS/

The Printrbot Jr printer my family and I got uses PLA and we have had many successful prints. Why I think it is a good filament for my family is because it is made of all natural ingredients in it – like sugar beets, corn, and wheat. That helps with the bad smelling part It also is very strong but it can bend and break sometimes. I found that out the hard way when a friend of mine accidentally broke it by pulling to hard.

Some people had many things to say about these kinds of filament. Here is a blog, RepRap.org, about these peoples’ comments.

• “In my opinion PLA is by far easier to get you working. With PLA you can do without a heated bed too (though you will get some warping). And with PLA you do not need to have a ventilation system in place.” – misan

• “Based on my limited experience here’s a few things I’ve noticed. ABS needs higher temperatures to get a good print quality. Those higher temps are going to wear down your printer faster. PLA smells better, whether or not it’s less toxic than ABS I don’t know. With PLA the filament is more brittle, breakable, prone to temperature issues. Here’s an example. Every other print I would make with PLA would jam the extruder. It turns out that after the first print, the residual heat would deform the filament already in the extruder. Then when I started the second print this deformed filament would always catch in the extruder assembly. So now after every print I take out the filament and cut off the last 4 inches. Maybe this is just my printer or my settings but the actual extrusion of ABS seems a little more well behaved. Extruding ABS is a little like squeezing toothpaste which hardens in about 3 seconds. PLA by contrast seems a bit gooier. It has to extrude constantly or else it might ooze a little. But this is probably a setting I have wrong. ABS is supposedly tougher and more heat resistant. I’d say focus on PLA just because the extra heat for ABS causes more problems.” – crutonius

http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,127917,128027

All in all my family and I are really happy with the filament we chose. The variations in size has been solved which helps in the oozing and filling problems. The strength depends on the design of the printed object and knowing the limitations.

Let the sweet printing process continue ……

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One distinguishing feature that differentiates a 3D printer from other household “appliances” is the fact it can create replacement parts and upgrades for itself.  We spent the weekend creating some upgrades and replacement parts.

The below are belt tension plates for the X and Y axis belts.  These help to keep the belts tight, and allows for future adjustments.

Next we printed a filament guide which we hope to help with the jamming that occasionally happens.

One of the replacement parts we printed was the small extruder gear.  On the install, I tightened the bold a bit too much and slightly cracked the plastic.  It is working fine, but sooner or later the gear will fail.  My first attempt at the gear was w/out a fan and did not look that great.  Since it is a small piece, and needs to be precise to work correctly, we slowed things way down to 5mm/second for all movements and placed a fan next to the print bed.  The below pic is the result – a very nice looking printed gear.  Unfortunately it took almost 2 hours to print.  I suspect we will eventually get print speeds up as we learn to tweak the slic3r settings.

We noticed the hot end would wobble in the Y axis direction, and it may have affected the quality of our prints.  So we got a wall hanger, bent it in half, and shoved it between the wood and the top of the hot end housing.  Not pretty, but it is very tight now.

We also did some analysis of different layer heights.  We wanted to push our Printrbot Jr to the limits – this is a start anyhow…  We ran a simple calibration model with various settings to see what we could learn about our Jr.  This is the model we printed from Thingiverse:  http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:37869

We have had an ongoing problem with infill for small spaces.  It seemed to shove way too much filament into small spaces, leading to a mess of melted plastic (right print).  We finally discovered a setting in Slic3r which fixed the problem, and we successfully printed the one on the left.

As we continued, we printed at 0.3mm layer height, 025mm, 0.2mm and 0.175 layer heights.

We also learned that even if you do not have a fan connected, you can turn on the cooling settings and indicate a minimum rest period between layers to allow the layers to properly cool.  This will slow the printer down during quick elevations.

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Hi this is Darby sorry we haven’t posted in a while…. we where very busy and made a lot of new cool creations. I am going to tell you about each one in the order that we did them in.

This is a very cool bracelet that my dad made me. We tried to do another bracelet before but it didn’t work. This one only took one try

This is a heart ring that my dad made for me. First we tried to do 3 hearts and it didn’t work. And we figured that out when my dad finally did it the 4th time…. then we decided to do something different, and here it is!!!

Isn’t that cool, this is a stretchlet you can fit it on you’re wrist quite easily. It can stretch easily because the Printrbot makes the fillament smaller….but hate to break it to you but the stretchlet is very fragile. It broke two days after I got it.

This is a Catan holder for settlements roads and cities. It takes a while but it
is defiantly worth the wait! We had one problem though the roads are a little lose in there holders, but it still works just fine. It’s a new way to play Catan!!!

Our most ambitious project was Yoda. For the first try you can’t even tell what it is. But the second try was the most successful. The first pic is what I want to talk about first…. My dad told me that in this step he had to support the neck because the Printrbot was putting filament in mid-air.

Do you see the warts on the side of his face, that was because when the Printrbot was trying to go from the ear back to the face and it had some filament left over and it made wart looking things. But I think it gives it some character!!

Here is the finished Yoda!!!!!!!!!

This is an i phone 5 charger stand. We didn’t have any problems with it but it had some warts like Yoda. My dad is very eager to fix that!!

And finally we made a submarine for my grandpa pop. On the first try it turned out great and he said he was going to love it!!

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This is Avery, Hi! I am here to tell you about the 3D printing of the Minecraft person.

I will take you step by step through the design and print process.

The first thing we did is we went into Tinkercad.com and designed the Minecraft person.  This is a free and easy to use 3D design program.

Next, we sent it into the slicer (Slic3r), the slicer slices the Minecraft person into tiny layers for the Printrbot to print.  Over the past few days, we tested different layer heights, the heights that we tested were 0.4 mm, 0.3 mm, and 0.2 mm. The thinner the layer heights the more detailed the print.  We have gotten the best results from 0.3mm so far.

Then, we opened up the printer interface, the name of the program is called Pronterface. This program  sends the sliced layers into the Printrbot.

Finally, we uploaded the Minecraft person into Thingiverse, which is an online source for free 3D models.  We uploaded so other people can print the Minecraft person if they want.  You can look at our designs and likes – our user name is dblanton10.

We downloaded this small cup from Thingiverse and printed it in orange.

Here is the printrbot printing the cup.  This is at the 0.3mm layer height.

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