This week our class was held at the Champaign-Urbana Fab Lab. It was truly an eye-opening experience, especially for me, a business student who never made anything by my own hands. I got to see a lot of equipment/machine/little pieces that I don’t know the function of, nor do I know their names. I got to see that 3D printing technology can get combined with a lot of existing skills, and that’s exciting. I guess being presented 3D printing machines alongside a lot of other equipment and little pieces made me view this technology in a more “down-to-earth” kind of way. 3D printing is not “fancy”, and it can actually been applied to advance a lot of the existing skills.

The students were divided into two groups. The other group was working with a loom or a laser cutting something like that. Our group got to work with the Arduinos, which I basically think it as a hardware that through programming can be used to sense/control physical objects. With the help of the instructor, we were able to make a touch sensor and a pilot light that blinks according to our setting. Photos and videos are attached below. I think by learning this, now I am able to explore further on my semester project (a temperature-sensitive cup holder). The Arduinos is definitely helpful in control physical object part, it’s just I have to get a temperature sensor or something like that.

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