Fast Company’s Jamais Cascio wrote an interesting article entitled The Desktop Manufacturing Revolution a couple of months ago. In the piece, Jamais describes the coming of a digital fabrication revolution when everyday people will be able to take a digital design, import it into a personal computer, and then send the file to specialized hardware that creates a 3D physical object.
Take a design for a simple product–an engine part, for example, or a piece of silverware, and feed it into a computer. Press “print.” Out pops (for a sufficiently wide definition of “pops”) a physical duplicate, made out of materials plastic, ceramic, metal — even sugar. Press “print” again, and out comes another copy–or feed in a new design, for the next necessary object.
It may sound like a scene from a low-rent version of Star Trek, but it’s real, and it’s happening with increasing frequency. This process goes by a few names, but it’s most commonly known as “3D Printing” (the older name, “rapid prototyping,” no longer captures the range of uses, while the other alternative name, “fabbing,” is a little too cyberpunk for the moment). While the process has been around since the mid-1980s, the cost of 3D printers has been dropping quickly, and now range to well under $10,000. [Fab@Home is creating a 3D printing kit that costs approximately $1500.] If that still sounds like a lot of money, you’re right–but don’t forget, it was when laser printers dropped to this price range in the mid-1980s that the desktop publishing revolution kicked off.
Much of my work at UVA’s Center for Technology and Teacher Education deals with the very same digital fabrication techniques mentioned in this article. Although we aren’t using 3D printers (yet), I am supporting a small network of teachers in Albemarle County who are using commercial software (Adobe Illustrator, Google Sketchup, Aspex’s Tabs MST) and die-cut machines to create physical, paper-based 3D models. The movie below is a simple depiction of the process and steps.
The ability to create digital designs like the one in the video might seem overly complex and technologically prohibitive for K12 teachers and students. Yes, this is an advanced example (teachers and students aren’t likely to dream up the parts for a Rack-and-Pinion gear system). However, the creation of 2D “shape nets” with software like Aspex’s Tabs MST and Google Sketchup is relatively easy. Sending the designs to die-cut machines for later construction, although not shown or described in this post, is a matter of learning the procedural steps.
How are the Albemarle County teachers using the software and equipment to digitally fabricate objects?
Elementary School
Elementary school teachers and students are using Aspex’s Tabs MST to create physical models that support geometric curricular topics as well as an emerging elementary engineering strand of learning. Tabs MST enables teachers and students to quickly and easily create shape nets of a user-defined size in a 3D environment that is user-friendly. Drag-and-drop, push-pull, and snap-to features make the rendering of complex designs in tangible form both reachable and practical.
Middle School
Middle school students are using Adobe Illustrator to design labels and reproducibles for various school projects. For example, the image below depicts monster-like letters (alphabeasts) that middle school students created for elementary students to use when learning the alphabet. The alphabeasts are designed in Illustrator and then printed and cut on magnetic sheets or static-cling vinyl.
High School
As a component of an engineering course focusing on problem solving, high school students are creating digital models in Google Sketchup. The digital designs are then flattened, sent to Adobe Illustrator, and then reproduced in physical, paper-based form. The movie below shows the flattening process in Google Sketchup.
Educational Implications
Dr. Glen Bull sums up the educational potential of digital fabrication systems when he says,
Fabrication technologies provide exposure to many mathematical and engineering concepts. Scaffolded practice for students in upper elementary grades and above provides the opportunity to see abstract visualizations- including students’ own drawings and sketches on the computer- translated into physical objects, offering an opportunity to explore these ideas at an early age in a very concrete way.
In later grades, students can study compound machines in science class, use mathematics to design their own digital models, and then fabricate their designs as three-dimensional objects. These types of activities give students direct experience with vectors and geometric transformations that are useful in many STEM-related fields.
Engineers and architects move between the digital world of the computer and the physical world, visualizing the result that occurs when a 2D drawing on the screen is transformed into a 3D object. Students in school can understand mathematical concepts by making connections between virtual and physical representations. These activities can simultaneously prepare them for 21st century careers.
-Glen Bull and Joe Garofalo, Personal Fabrication Systems: From Bits to Atoms
Learn More
I created a website to support all of the teachers in the digital fabrication network. To learn more, please visit http://www.digitalfabrication.org
References:
Digital Fabrication Image
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