AUT - Students Build a MakerBot 3D Printer
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Students Build a MakerBot 3D Printer
Six AUT Bachelor of Creative Technologies students took the opportunity to build their own MakerBot 3D printer as part of the Creative Technologies Studio III paper, and are now looking toward the future.Jason Barnett and Felicity ‘Zinnie’ Powell were two of these students who said as soon as their tutor mentioned the project they were keen to be involved.
“It took us two or three weeks in the studio and we got all the instructions off the internet,” says Barnett.
Powell says the construction of the printer works like a collective consciousness - it doesn’t come with just one instruction manual.
“You have to piece it together from internet resources such as YouTube, wikis and discussion forums.
“It’s an open source project,” says Powell. “Just as we learned from the community, we made our own discoveries and then put the information back out there too.”
After the construction of the printer the group was able to then work on separate projects using the printer as a base for their research and ideas.
For Barnett the focus of his project was the economic effects of what this type of technology, more specifically this kind of printer, will be. He used 3D Printing as a leap-pad to explore the future of technological awareness, education, and unemployment.
For Powell it was the collective consciousness approach and how this new trend - moving away from gaining information in a linear fashion - requires some serious re-wiring of the way we think and value information today, in order to be successful.She wrote a sixty-page thesis on why we're not ready for 3D printing to take over... at least not without a little bit of a paradigm shift.
The group will have the printer on display at We Can Create and say the making of the printer has given them a lot of insight into the technology.
“We are pretty strong and knowledgeable on the subject now. We lived and breathed it when we were studying it,” Barnett says.
The pair both have intent to pursue post-graduate study, and agree that this kind of project sets students up well for the future; the Creative Technologies degree is not simply about learning technical skills, but the ability to work independently and autonomously.
“You learn life skills,” says Powell. “And there is so much diversity into what you can look at. You get out what you put in - you can create your own focus and projects.”
“This is training us for jobs that don’t exist yet.”
Last updated: 24 Aug 2011 4:45pm