Staying in a class for three hours is draining but this BADM 395 class is the exception to that rule, here we listen to exciting and innovative speakers, watch the makerbots 3D-print objects of different colors and get to see finished products on display in the lab.

In this week’s lecture we learned alot more about the maker community on and around campus from Jeff Ginger – Director of the CUC  Fablab – with a focus on the FabLab and the potential locations for making and innovation on campus even he had not fully explored yet, but intends to do so. From the many examples of projects and initiatives they do at the FabLab that incorporated art and innovation, I look forward to working within the FabLab space for our semester project. From his talk, I could see a lot of correlation with the “Maker Movement” and the “3D Printing Revolution” that were in the readings and how they work hand in hand. These blew me away with the many applications and potential for 3D printing in our futures, daily lives and industries as well as education through the utilization of 3D printing in maker spaces for classes.

Then after this I got to meet and introduce myself to my two new team mates for the semester project – Tiffany and Odelia – then dived through thingiverse as part of our in class activity. This showed me a facet of the interconnected world of makers, a community set up to spark creativity and give access to cad files for personal use/customization. It showed us one of the 3 ways to make by “Downloading and Printing”. Then we were able to download a creation of our own choice and 3D print it. My choice was a bee hive drawer:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/147432762@N02/shares/RDP34a

By diving further into thingiverse and shapeways, I found a couple more cool things that I’d love to print and use:

Vice: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1117728

I work on a lot of tech teams and a frequent problem we have is holding things we use upright, but with this I could easily solve this problem by printing versions of this cad file but resizing it to fit the specific use I need them for.

Raspberry Pi Case: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:922740

Last semester I was working on a personal arduino/raspberry pi project that invilved a bulky shield on it that would not fit the case I saw online for it, but this case on here would be perfect for the project I was working on with a little resizing without keeping the aspect ratio constant. This is but one of the many cool microcontroller cases i saw on these pages with cool designs.

USB Cable Holder: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:755186

I am someone who attends alot of workshops, events and conferences that give away alot free gadgets that have usb cables and because of this I have a lot usb cables lying around in my room in a disheveled mess. This with a bit of resizing and probably more than one duplicates would be able to help me organize these cables and access them better.

Stackable Battery Holders: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1004996

As I said, I am someone with alot of gadgets that either are recharged by usb cable or AA-battery powered. With this I would be able to keep all of my extra batteries in a cool way rather than digging around in the bottom of my drawer/cabinets just for one. I would probably resize it to be able to store more batteries too.