Reflection 3: Research opportunity with 3D printers

I had gone over to my professor's lab with 3D printers about 3 times, towards the end of January and beginning of February, and logged a total of 6 hours. I thought it was great fun and it was an excellent learning opportunity. I met 2 graduate students, Nathan and Joe, who taught me the workings of a 3D printer. They taught me how to use a software called Pronterface, which operates the 3D printers by giving various commands. The second time we went, we actually got to print printer parts, by ourselves. Those parts were printed to be fixed into another 3D printer.

Meanwhile, we started removing parts from the other printer so that we could fit in the parts that we had just printed. Removing the old parts from the printer was the toughest part since we had the parts were fit in really tight and the screws were very small.

The greatest bit of this was learning the use of Proterface. It was very complicated in the beginning since there were a lot of things to be adjusted before it would actually make the 3D printer print. I had to make sure the axes, the temperature, the slicer settings were right so that it would print properly. I thought adjusting the slicer settings was the toughest bit but I seem to have a hang of it now.

I hope to print more thing next time and make sure it all goes well without requiring help from other at the lab.