3D Printing

My school actually has two 3D printers for our learners. It allows our learners access to an amazing opportunity to design, create and make! Our school motto is to think, innovate, create. The learners utilize the 3D printer for various things. My third-grade son and some friends designed and printed a Christmas ornament for their classroom Christmas tree in December. We have had things "break" before and learners designed and printed items to fix the issues. An example was a set of unifix cubes was missing a couple pieces. Learners recreated those pieces and printed them to complete the set. The older learners at our school are who primarily utilize the printers 6th-9th grade but younger learners have partnered with those older learners to print things like the Christmas ornament. 3D models are great visuals for the learners. At my previous school we did a robotics competition and had everything designed in 3D software and everything to have a test/ model but we did not have access to a 3D printer at the school. It takes some time to print prototypes.

Rapid prototyping seems to sound grand by the name but seems to not be as out of the box user-friendly as 3D printers are. Rapid prototyping machines allow you to be able to use various mediums that are not an option when 3D printing. The price difference between a 3D printer and a rapid prototyping machine as well as all needed services and materials is significantly different. It is much cheaper to buy and use a 3D printer. Though it takes a while to 3D print anything 3D printers are more for printing smaller things than what someone would be doing using a rapid prototyping machine.