I remember when I first saw the Digital Making Seminar course flyer, I imagined this course would be radically different than courses I had taken in the past. Now that I am writing my semester’s reflection, I can safely say that this course greatly surpassed my expectations. I did not simply learn in this course; this course transformed the way that I think.

The Maker Movement and Learning to Become a Maker

When I first heard about the Maker Movement, I was fascinated because I have always had great interest in exploring ways that people can learn most optimally. Professor Kylie Peppler from Indiana University spoke to us at the beginning of the semester in great detail regarding the Maker Movement and I was inspired to truly understand what ‘making’ could mean in my own learning experience. This course gave me the opportunity to experience firsthand what it means to learn by making and how tangibly creating something can challenge your mind in ways that traditional teaching methods simply can’t. By getting to experience a workshop put on by Design for America, I saw just how significant this movement was and that I was sitting at the forefront of it. Not every student gets the change to take a course like this, so being able to witness testimonies from many guest speakers throughout the semester showed me just how significant this whole ‘making’ ordeal really is.

Moving forward, the importance of the Maker Movement and everything I’ve learned about making digitally has motivated me to be involved with this community and continue expanding my knowledge in the areas of disruptive making technology. I have most formally pursued this by taking on employment at the MakerLab! I began working here very recently and I could not be more excited to continue being immersed in a place where I’ve learned that creativity and innovation are the fuel to the continuing technological development of society.

Technology and All The Ways I Learned to Make

This semester, our class was exposed to a myriad of different tools and technologies that become our instruments for making. From our sessions at the Champaign Fab Lab to our field trip to the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science & Technology, I feel like I discovered so many different ways to create things that I did not even know existed. Some of my personal favorites were learning how to digitally embroider and create objects in Fusion 360. I think what I enjoyed most about creating through these mediums was my ability to allow my thoughts to flow freely from one to the next. One of the biggest takeaways I have from learning how to tinker with things like arduinos and different softwares is that the digital making space is not a confining one. I am able to create something digitally and do 1 million+ things to it on a variety of different platforms. Digital making allows us to bring ideas to fruition in ways that were not possible before and simply because of that, I can see that this course brought me immense value.

One of the aspects that I loved about this course was also learning that the technologies we used can be leveraged for so many different uses, including ones that many people may never even have thought about. For example, I am involved in different religious communities and I was so pleased to find that I could leverage our digital making platforms to create things that I could use in the realm of my faith. A religious application is probably one of the last things people would think of when talking about things like 3D printers or digital embroidery, but the endless possibilities of digital making are what makes it so incredible! 

Digital Making is Whimsical, Unpredictable, and an Unending Exploration

I also have to note that while I intentionally made some pretty cool stuff, I also ended up accidentally creating things. I tried to print a grocery-bag hanger that was formulated from the base of a bolt and I also tried to print a digital scan of myself as a shot glass. Neither print accomplished the purposes of what I had for them individually, but together I created an interesting art piece! The grocery-bag-bolt-hanger spins in the hole I created in the digital scan of myself. This to me, represents the beauty of digital making: even when you think you’re done, you’re probably not! 

This course has taught me that a singular object can be viewed from multiple perspectives, which consequently derive multiple purposes for the object. I firmly believe that this is an important way of thinking that our generation needs to develop in order to become leaders within the global economy. By exploring concepts in something like Digital Making, we learn how to be empathetic, dynamic, and technically capable leaders capable of succeeding on any terrain. For this reason alone, I could not be more grateful to have taken this class and I am extremely excited for all the ways that my experiences in this class will enable me to help others see the value in creating digitally.

Ideation and Product Development

This entire semester, our class has been learning a great deal about the process of making and what it means to take an idea from early beginning thoughts to full execution. We had the privilege of having Professor Kylie Peppler from Indiana University speak with us about the Maker Movement. We’ve learned about the inherent value of thinking like a ‘maker’ and learning about the different ways that we can take a problem and transform into a tangible solution that can benefit others. Additionally, we’ve discuss the ideation process and learned how to approach the sequence of steps that it takes to actually develop a product. Design for America put on a workshop for us that helped us to see the different stages of innovation and how to ultimately get to your final product using principles like human-centered design.

3D Printing: Learning Platforms

Illinois MakerLab

Digital Making focuses on creating and making digitally through the medium of 3D printing. We have learned about a variety of different softwares that we can use to develop 3D models that can ultimately be printed at the Illinois MakerLab on MakerBot printers. The first platform we learned about was Tinkercad. This web-based tool allows users to easily create a model by providing pre-created geometries and basic tools to do things like create holes, construct letters and numbers, and modify the size/shape of the objects users work with. We then progressed to learn about Autodesk Fusion 360. This software is more sophisticated and allows for users to manipulate objects on many more measurements than a platform like Tinkercad and with greater amounts of precision. We also learned about a high-end software called Geomagic which essentially renders 3D scans, refines the scans with various tools, and parameterizes scans into models to ultimately be used in softwares like Fusion 360 or Autodesk Inventor. Gaining exposure to all of these different tools has been invaluable.

3D Printing & The Business Environment

In addition to learning about all the different methods and tools for #digitalmaking (also our class hashtag!), we took time to understand the implications that digital making has had and is continuing to have on today’s dynamic business environment. 3D printing is becoming the disruptive technology of the future that has great implications for production processes, procurement, supply chains, and much more. Additive manufacturing, a corporate extension of 3D printing processes, is helping to lower product lead times and helping to optimize product manufacturing by lower costs and enabling customization. One of the first things you learn in this class is that complexity is not an obstacle when it comes to 3D printing and many digital making methods. This enables the production of objects with complex geometries that may have not been possibly on a larger scale before.

Technology Immersion and Exposure

Champaign Fab Lab

In addition to 3D printing and scanning methods, our class has learned many different techniques to make digitally. We’ve learned about arduinos and the use of e-textiles to create some very interesting things that require the use of circuitry and computer programming. Additionally, our class has been visiting the Champaign Fab Lab to learn and play around with other technologies. We’ve furthered our knowledge of how to use arduinos at the lab and we have also been playing around with digital embroidery and laser cutting technologies. Participating in sessions at the Fab Lab has enabled us to become makers with a myriad of new tools. As the course continues, we will continue to learn about technologies that are disrupting different making spaces and become more skilled in using these technologies.

Week 6: My First Invention

This past week, we had the opportunity to use Fusion 360 software to print our first creation. We had spent the past week playing around with different tutorials and exploring the different aspects of the software. After messing around for a few hours, many of us were able to produce metal bolts, headphones, and other practical devices. During class, I took the principle of building upon what already exists and decided it may be most feasible for me to build off the metal built I had made in my tutorial. I spent about 30 minutes thinking about all the different modifications I could make for the object and then as I played around, I remembered a design I had seen on Thingiverse. I thought about extending the different walls on the bolt to create a makeshift grocery bag carrier!

Making the Thing

Going through the different aspects of the software, I was thinking about the different ways I could make this product. I finally decided to use the ‘modify’ tool to expand the walls of each side of the bolt to become beams of greater length. By making these beams, I figured they could support the weight of grocery bags hung onto them. However, as I began making the various aspects of the grocery bag carrier, I found that I also needed something additional as a ‘hook’ like aspect. One of the assistants in our 3D lab provided me with some great insight (collaboration is ALWAYS welcome) and I ended up adding some protruding ends to the beams. With some consideration of the actual strength of the object and a little recollection of physics-force diagrams from high school, I came up with this thing!

What Will I Make Now?

I feel MUCH more comfortable with the  Fusion 360 software now and I feel much more capable of creating an object from scratch. I’m still learning about the different nuances of the software, but I feel confident in my ability to create a relatively simple object and modify it to meet certain specifications. I have thought of some interesting product ideas, but I think the greatest challenge will be scaling the object in this software to ensure that what I think of in my head actually fits the needs I see in reality. Knowing how dimensions in a software translate into dimensions in real-life and then taking into consideration the potential error of the actual 3D printer itself is a very iterative and integrated process. I’m learning now that product development using additive manufacturing processes may require patience and dealing with frustration at times, but I’m excited to see all of the different ideas I may come up with!