Portola High School in California Takes to Kickstarter to Fund a 3D Printer

3D printing in schools has only recently become a reality. While there are many schools around the world that have already had the opportunity to bring 3D printers into their classrooms, the majority of schools are not quite there yet. The reasons are quite simple. There are a lack of funds, a lack of knowledge, and in most cases, not enough motivation from students, teachers and faculty.

However, this isn’t entirely the case for one school, located in the mountains of Northern California. Portola High, a small school with 17 teachers and 237 students, has more than enough motivation, but is lacking the required funds.

Fortunately for Portola High, they have one teacher, Bran Freschi that is bent and determined to find a way to get a 3D printer for his school. Freschi, who was hired last year as a Learning Specialist, to work with students with learning disabilities, came up with the idea to pursue 3D printing at his school this past fall.

After attending a STEM conference in Sacramento in the Fall of 2013, myself and a few teachers got to see and touch a real 3D printer,” Freschi told 3DPrint.com. “I instantly fell in love with it.”

That 3D printer was a MakerBot Replicator, and the MakerBot saleman at the conference gave Freschi a 3D printed nut and bolt that had been printed right in front of him. According to Freschi, that’s what sealed the deal.

“Since that day, I have showed that little toy to hundreds of people, and their reaction is always the same: Their face gets scrunched up and they say ‘Wait…what?’,” explained Freschi. “Then I get to explain to them how a 3D printer works; like a big hot glue gun with a weed eater line in the back of it, materializing objects in all three dimensions”

We asked Mr. Freschi, how this 3D printer would get used in his school, and he was more than prepared to answer. We could tell that he has huge plans on integrating the MakerBot Replicator into his classes, as well as the classes of other teachers. He informed us that he has one ‘career tech’ teacher and one math teacher on board. The career tech teacher would offer a 3D printing and Sketchup class, while the math teacher plans to create some mathematical lessons around the printer.

Freschi plans to utilize the 3D printer in his classes by designing and printing items that can be sold, in order to give his students life skills centered on work ethic, communication, and financial topics. He also sees uses for the printer in other areas of the school, including art, science, and technology. He hopes that art students can print out art work, as well as useful tools.

“I have a grand plan of implementing a recycling program at our school that would utilize a grinder and an extruder to make our own ‘recycled’ 3D printer filament,” Freschi told us.

Finding funding for the printer has been the largest hurdle. Freschi has approached the school board indirectly, about getting funding, but was unfortunately shot down. However, one of the school’s administrators really believed in the idea, and encouraged Freschi to continue to look for funding sources. Finding funding through the PTA or Boosters was not an option in Freschi’s mind, as he didn’t feel that they had money to spend on a device that none of them probably understood. So, he came up with the idea of funding the printer via Kickstarter.

“I thought of Kickstarter pretty early on, and lots of kids showed interest in the process,” explained Freschi. “I started building the campaign way back in October. After the campaign was finished, literally ten minutes before we hit the launch button, the district office put the brakes on it, telling me that they needed to be the recipients of the funds, and not me personally. Long story short, I eventually got around this district policy by soliciting the assistance of the Booster Club. They agreed to take the money from the Kickstarter campaign, buy the printer and then donate it to the school.”

The Kickstarter campaign launched just a little over 2 days ago, and it has already raised over $1,000. Freschi informed us that it has been received very well by the entire community, and all of the schools in the district are “buzzing about it”.

Backers of the campaign will be awarded with one of several items, including decals, t-shirts, customized 3D printed phone cases, other 3D printed items and more.

Help Mr. Freschi, and his school raise funds for this project by donating as little as $1 to the cause, via their Kickstarter campaign page, or by sharing this story. Discuss this project, and let us know if you have donated to the cause in the ‘Portola High Kickstarter Campaign’ thread on 3DPB.com.

  

 

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Published By

Arka Roy

www.sketchup-ur-space.com

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Some exclusive workshops on digital manufacturing with sketchup

Some exclusive workshop will be held in Ljubljana, Slovenia on June, 2014 to discuss and practice how to utilize a CNC milling machine, 3d printer & PLA rapid prototyping, rapid 3d modeling with sketchup. The attendees will be provided a tailored 3d printer having a milling head to slice and form several materials. There will be practical training to accomplish small projects. Some open source software and machineries will be utilized in this workshop

By participating with this workshop, all the participants will be familiar with the fundamentals of digital fabrication and adopt all the essential knowledge required to produce simple 2d models to cut and shape.

The workshop will be very useful for Tinkerers, makers, product and industrial designers; architects, carpenters, engineers as well as any other professionals or individual prefer to put their steps in the enthralling world of digital manufacturing.

The workshop will be conducted in English language with Slovenian speaking assistant.

The attendees have to bring their individual laptop with SketchUp installed.

·         COURSE OUTLINE:

·         Begins with the CNC mill parts

·         The software tool-series

·         Where to find ready-made 3d models

·         Build up your project with basic sketchup tools for digital model customization

·         From .jpg to .stl

·         Modify .stl files

·         Project Milling

·         Fundamental of digital fabrication and the 3^rd general revolution

Fees for workshop

Register online

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Published By

Arka Roy

www.sketchup4architect.com

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How to create this field for football with Sketchup

Simone Piccioni

First I created a regulatory field , ie, a rectangle of 117 x 64 mm , and I drew the lines of the game inspired by some photos found on the net.

 

At this point, with 15 mm thick boards , I created a box around the field , each of these is a component so if we're going to work on an automatic will change all copies and this will be very useful in the later stages.

   

This field needs to be a little ' raised , perhaps with legs 80x80 mm square base (they are always copies of a component ) , in the lower part of the legs I created with squares slightly smaller.

   

To hold the whole structure, but also to give more realism , I added the bolts. But back to the speech of the components, if we add the bolts entering the component " Paw " ( just click twice above) magically appear on the other leg ... unless you do not want to repeat several times the same operation.

   

However, the realization of the bolts is very simple but effective . I created two cylinders of different sizes (see photo below). In the smaller one I created with the tool "Offset" a circle even smaller.

   

and I reduced to 5 the number of segments in the information entity and then push it slightly inward.

   

To give more realism to the bolt I rounded the edge of the smaller cylinder with the plugin "Round Corner".

   

Finally, this is the result.

   

We return to the playing field ... All football fields of the banks have in order not to stop the ball , even mine, and it is a triangle 20 x 20 mm which runs along its perimeter , obviously not at the door.

   

But now comes the fun part ! Make 8 equally spaced holes 20x20mm larger than one in the middle . Easier said than done.

   

I added the rings around the holes where they will spend the iron bars of the players and a boss where you stop bars of 'opponent . Even these have rounded them with the plugin "Round Corner" and I have also added the screws.

   

For the central hole instead I made a ring in her size then I created a quarter-sphere and I pulled one of the two sections,

   

and I combined everything.

   

Then I mounted the door , always with screws. Make it however you like , I took a cue from the internet.

   

To count the points I made a cube and rounded edges always with the plugin "Round Corner" and copied 12 times.

   

This is where things get complicated. To achieve the tiller handle I drew half of his section,

   

then with the instrument , "Follow me ," I have followed the trajectory of a circle of 30 segments that I drew earlier.

   

But with a handle so ' smooth swivels are wasted.

   

So to give it a more boxy shape I created a hole decagonal ( that ugly word ... ) on a rectangle,

   

of sufficient scale to bring out its corners slightly from the cylindrical part of the ' grip making sure it is perfectly centered.

   

From the rectangle tool " Push / Pull " I have created a solid to almost completely cover the ' grip , I exploded and then highlighted everything, then open the drop-down menu I clicked on " Intersect with Model".

   

After deleting segments of the white solid I can only delete segments that are intersected with the decagon ( parts violet photo below).

   

And also the handle is ready.

   

Now the tricky part. Players!

  

I started with an image I found on the net and began modeling on this half player. We need a little 'practice.

 

As you can see in the ' image below , I created a border that would ply Sock player.

 

To make it I used another plugin called "Joint push pull," virtually acts as the instrument "Push/Pull"

 

but with the ability push / pull faces at the same time more complex solids (see photo below).

   

I used the same plugin for the collar of his shirt. So a few tweaks to the head and body,

   

and I joined a mirrored copy

   

To round better player , I used the plugin " Subdivide and smooth " setting the iteration to 1.

Now, just assemble and paint all the pieces. I also added the springs at the end of the race of the bars, you can see how to implement them by clicking here.

The field is ready!

  

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Published By

Arka Roy

www.sketchup-ur-space.com

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