{"id":8797,"date":"2016-05-12T06:21:46","date_gmt":"2016-05-12T06:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=8797"},"modified":"2016-05-12T06:21:46","modified_gmt":"2016-05-12T06:21:46","slug":"3-d-printing-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/3-d-printing-101\/","title":{"rendered":"3-D Printing 101"},"content":{"rendered":"

As MIT course challenges students to reinvent 3-D printing, professor aims to share approach with others.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"One<\/a>
One project in particular was an instant draw: a 3-D printer that printed soft-serve ice cream. \u201cI had never eaten something that came out of a project before,\u201d Hart says. \u201cIt was cool.\u201d
Photo courtesy of John Hart.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.<\/strong> —\u00a0It\u2019s been more than 30 years since the invention of 3-D printing, and yet in some ways the technology is still a frontier of unexplored potential.<\/span><\/p>\n

Three-dimensional printing \u2014 and additive manufacturing in general \u2014 is the process of depositing material, layer by layer, in patterns determined by computer software, to precisely fabricate a three-dimensional object. The technology has been used to make hip and dental implants, as well as architectural models and aerospace tools, including a socket wrench that astronauts recently printed aboard the International Space Station.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the most part, however, 3-D printing is a small-scale fabrication tool, used by engineers and designers to quickly print up a prototype. In recent years, access to more affordable desktop 3-D printers has helped fuel the maker movement, giving students and hobbyists a chance to experiment with the technology.<\/span><\/p>\n

John Hart, the Mitsui Career Development Associate Professor in Contemporary Technology and Mechanical Engineering at MIT, says early education on 3-D printing is the key to helping the technology expand as an industry. In 2013, Hart created an MIT graduate course, 2.S998 (Additive Manufacturing), that explores the fundamentals, applications, and implications of 3-D printing. The students attend lectures, learn to use commercial 3-D printers to fabricate custom objects, and square off in a bridge-building competition, to see who can design and print the sturdiest bridge with the lightest weight.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Since<\/a>
Since 2013, John Hart (standing, center) has been teaching the MIT graduate course 2.S998 (Additive Manufacturing), which explores the fundamentals of 3-D printing.
Photo courtesy of John Hart.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hart has described the course and its outcomes in an article in the journal\u00a0Additive Manufacturing<\/i>. The students\u2019 class projects have led to several patents and entrepreneurial efforts.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI very much enjoyed creating and teaching the course and I\u2019m proud of what the students did, and what it means about the future potential of additive manufacturing\u201d Hart says. \u201cAlso, I think it\u2019s important for faculty across the world to share our approaches to teaching, and this can enable better hands-on education and accelerate innovation in design and manufacturing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When the students have familiarized themselves with the principles and processes of 3-D printing, Hart challenges them to reinvent the technology.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI asked them to think completely off the rails, if they could conceive a 3-D printer that\u2019s never been made before, or a useful material that can\u2019t be printed using current printers.\u201d Hart says. \u201cWe identify the biggest problems or creative opportunities, then reign ourselves in and say, \u2018What can we actually do this semester?\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As it turns out, Hart and the students determined that 3-D printers can be fashioned to print some rather unexpected materials. The students\u2019 final projects have included printers that they built specially to print molten glass and even soft-serve ice cream. The course not only educates students but also has shown Hart what the future of 3-D printing might hold.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look at even the most basic 3-D printer, it is a vehicle to learn about machine design, and software, and materials processing,\u201d Hart says. \u201dThat\u2019s a very hands-on, eyes-on way to learn and innovate.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The ABCs of 3-DP<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

For those students who have taken Hart\u2019s Additive Manufacturing course, the experience is a concentrated, semester-long dose of 3-D printing. The course begins with lectures on the technology\u2019s fundamental principles, along with labs in which students can experiment with desktop printers.<\/span><\/p>\n

[pullquote]After the students became comfortable with using the 3-D printers, Hart challenged them with a bridge-building competition, to 3-D print a multipart bridge that had the highest ratio of strength to weight.\u00a0[\/pullquote]<\/p>\n

As the first lab assignment, the students were asked to design and print a part, or an assembly of parts, that would be difficult to fabricate using traditional manufacturing methods. For these parts, students chose to print personalized accessories for electronics, small pieces of jewelry, a cable organizer, and a case for a custom circuit board. After printing their parts, the students inspected them for defects, assessing the limitations of the associated 3-D printing process.<\/span><\/p>\n

After the students became comfortable with using the 3-D printers, Hart challenged them with a bridge-building competition, to 3-D print a multipart bridge that had the highest ratio of strength to weight. \u00a0Designs ranged in their internal composition and overall shape, including one design that was inspired by the bone structures in bird beaks. \u00a0The winning design, however, was the simplest and could be printed as a single piece and unraveled to span the specified dimensions.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the course\u2019s capstone project, students were asked to \u201cconceptualize, justify, design, and prototype a novel contribution to additive manufacturing technology,\u201d according to Hart\u2019s paper. Hart kicked off the project by suggesting themes, including printing novel materials, such as food, biomaterials or composites, improving the rate and quality of 3-D printing, or incorporating scanning into the 3-D printing process.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBeyond the knowledge and ideas, the students\u2019 fearless attitude and ability to hack together quick prototypes and use spaces ranging from research labs to maker spaces was essential \u00a0to building hardware and making projects come to life,\u201d Hart says.<\/span><\/p>\n

From the freezer to the flame<\/span><\/p>\n

At the end of the course, the students presented their final projects at an expo that was open to the public. One project in particular was an instant draw: a 3-D printer that printed soft-serve ice cream. Students used a low-cost printer, flipped it over, and placed it inside a small freezer, into which they fed a stream of ice cream solution from a rotating Cuisinart. To rapidly freeze the ice cream as it printed, the students also piped in a feed of liquid nitrogen. With this setup, they printed ice cream in three-dimensional patterns of stars and circles.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another student team, including an experienced glass blower, designed a printer to fabricate sculptures out of molten glass \u2014 a design for which they have since filed a patent.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThey built their printer entirely from scratch and did experiments in the MIT Glass Lab,\u201d Hart says. \u201cThey were scooping molten glass out of the furnace and pouring it into the printer, and standing next to it with torches as they learned how to control the process.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Hart hopes that the article about the class will help other institutions grow educational initiatives in 3-D printing, which is essential to expand its capabilities and applications. In addition to the graduate course, he also offers a one-week summer program for professionals, which has attracted executives, engineers, and designers from a wide range of disciplines. He\u2019s also hoping to form an industry consortium at MIT to support efforts in additive manufacturing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThrough our teaching and research, we hope to open up new opportunities for 3-D printing,\u201d Hart says. \u201cTo me, it\u2019s not clear yet what all those opportunities are. It\u2019s only a matter of time for the creativity of the world to figure that out.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Hart, the Mitsui Career Development Associate Professor in Contemporary Technology and Mechanical Engineering at MIT, says early education on 3-D printing is the key to helping the technology expand as an industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":8798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-it"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Additive-Manu-5.jpg",780,426,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Additive-Manu-5-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Additive-Manu-5-300x163.jpg",300,163,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Additive-Manu-5.jpg",750,410,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Additive-Manu-5.jpg",750,410,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Additive-Manu-5.jpg",780,426,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Additive-Manu-5.jpg",780,426,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Additive-Manu-5.jpg",780,426,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Additive-Manu-5.jpg",780,426,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Additive-Manu-5.jpg",600,328,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Additive-Manu-5.jpg",600,328,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Additive-Manu-5.jpg",760,415,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Additive-Manu-5.jpg",550,300,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Additive-Manu-5.jpg",95,52,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Additive-Manu-5.jpg",640,350,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Additive-Manu-5.jpg",96,52,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MIT-Additive-Manu-5.jpg",150,82,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Education<\/a> IT<\/a>","tag_info":"IT","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}