3D printing - to schools (techno-marathon for assembling 3D printers in Yekaterinburg)

Most of our readers know that one of the main activities of MakeItLab is a 3D printing. We are developing this very interesting and promising direction for the third year. During this time, our residents managed to hold a lot of events, seminars and lectures aimed at promoting the technology.

The technical education of schoolchildren can be considered an equally important area of ​​work for a hackspace. On these issues, we even have several articles on Habré ( one , two , three , four ). And it would be foolish of us not to try to combine these two directions. Give children printers , and children printers .
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What is the best way to combine 3D printing and children's technical creativity? And most importantly, where to start? Perhaps you can buy a printer at the school, tell the computer science teacher how to use it. is that enough? Obviously not.

This year, together with the friendly organization “Ural Club of New Education”, we launched a series of events for the assembly of 3D printers by teachers and schoolchildren. What is it, and whether we managed to collect these same 3D-printers, read below under the cut!

Techno Marathon

The first event was held in the framework of the festival "The City of Tech-Creation", which started in February in our city. At the suggestion of the club’s leader, Irina Zakirova, this action was called “Techno Marathon”.

Background

The idea of ​​the collective assembly of 3D printers is not new. In our country, for example, the guys from the Navigator Campus hackspace are engaged in such a noble cause. They call this action "MAKERTON 3D Printer".

The essence of the event is extremely simple. We invite several teams of participants who are invited to assemble a 3D printer on their own. For assembling, commands are given everything they need - a set for assembling a printer (in different degrees of readiness), tools, instructions. Also, the presence of competent engineers who are ready to come to the rescue at any time is obligatory. Often, the assembly runs as a competition. Anyone who collects his printer faster than the others gets some useful prize. For example, he gets a 3D printer for free!

We, too, dreamed of this idea from its very foundation, waited until the stars were formed, so to speak. And now, finally, half a year ago, we managed to combine our engineering knowledge with the organizational skills of Irina Zakirova, and began preparing for a techno-marathon for assembling 3D printers!

What for?

So let's start with the most important question: why does a school need a 3D printer? We encounter a lot of skepticism about this, which we constantly have to break with examples from life and world experience. So what is a printer for? Yes, at least for the rapid reproduction of textbooks. Looking at the portals of foreign 3D printers, you can find a lot of different objects that allow your child to more effectively learn one or another lesson.

A simple example is a biology lesson. What if instead of a DNA picture, each child will be able to print out a piece of the double helix, feel it, understand its spatial features? Even to throw a neighbor, and then it will be more useful than the contemplation of the picture.



Or another example is a plant cell. You can pull the mitochondria :)



For a biology class, you can also print, for example, bones, organs, or whole animals. On physics: working models of mechanisms, stands for physical experiments. On mathematics: surfaces defined by cunning functions, cross sections of shapes, fractals. Etc. I believe we will dedicate a separate article to this separately.

A similar question can be asked to the house of creativity. But there is even easier to answer. 3D printer in technical creativity is an indispensable tool for the rapid production of parts. Today, printed parts are widely used in educational robo-projects, in aircraft and ship modeling. A good example is a quadrocopter whose frame is printed on a 3D printer.



There is an even more valuable layer of applicability of a 3D printer - this is 3D modeling. One thing is just to print the finished model. Another thing is to first create an object, then design an object, and finally print it on a 3D printer. It is this case that is most interesting to us from the point of view of the technical creativity of children.

At whose expense is the banquet?

But back to our techno marathon. And the first question: who will buy printers for schools?

The first option we tried was to try to take some kind of profile grant. Unfortunately, the option is not played. This does not mean that the approach is wrong in principle, we just did not succeed.

The second option is to ask for money from large (and not so) enterprises. As you know, industrial enterprises often take patronage over schools, and in every possible way try to help these schools with a ruble. But in order to bring this idea to the management of the company, you need to have direct links and recommendations. We started our event with a clean face, and we didn’t have much friendly enterprises. As a result, out of six announced teams, one 3D printer paid for the company (Beloyarsk NPP), another bought a printer with grant money (thanks to SKB-Kontur, and hello to all IT companies). Again, the option itself is working. After the first technical marathons, we hope for a much wider support from the region’s enterprises.

The third option is to pay for printers from extrabudgetary funds of the school or home of creativity. As practice has shown, this is also quite a working option. Of course, provided that the 3D printer is reasonable money. Here, in fact, the second big org-question arises:

What printer will we collect?

The first thing that comes to mind is the RepRap 3D printer. These are printers that have been thought out specifically for assembly at home. According to RepRap there is a mass of documentation, videos, and we in our hackspace once started with just such a simple machine. In general, the choice fell on Prusa I3 from the Spanish company BQ . Here he is handsome in the photo.



Incidentally, one of those that collected our techno marathon.

Members

According to common practice, teams of an arbitrary number of people take part in the event. There are as many teams as the organizers can withstand. In our case, three teams per day was the best option. In total, six teams showed up at our first techno-marathon, which we divided into two groups:

February 28, 2015

• Center for Education and Vocational Guidance of the Upper Pyshma;
• Schools No64 from the city of Lesnoy;
• Polytechnic Department of the Palace of Youth.

March 5, 2015

• Center for Children's Art of the city of Irbit;
• School No1 GO Zarechny;
• House of Children's Art October district of Yekaterinburg.

All that is needed

In order to assemble printers, in addition to participating teams, we needed:

• soldering irons - to solder the nuts in the plastic parts of the printer;
• files (flat and round) - for finishing parts that are inserted into each other;
• screwdrivers and a set of hexagons;
• drill and drill bit set - drill out poorly printed holes;
• scissors and stationery knife;
• ruler - for calibration;
• passatizhi - to all flatten :)
• hammer or mallet - to drive bearings.

Well, of course, all this had to be multiplied by the number of teams.

And still need helpers, which can be students of technical colleges, or just hand-handed guys (or girls). You should always be on the alert and help lagging teams.

Assembly

The assembly of 3D printers was carried out according to a clear (Russian-language) step-by-step instructions provided by the manufacturer. In general, it must be admitted, the BQ Prusa I3 Hephestos printer was ideally suited for the techno marathon. Yes, there were awkward moments with breaking parts and poorly fitted grooves, but it is extremely difficult to find Russian-language counterparts for such money.

So, unpack the boxes with the details. Everything is packaged extremely comfortable and presentable.



Intensively we collect together all the details of the case. At this stage, by the way, several times there were problems with the layout. The fact is that the printer frame is almost symmetrical, and you can easily confuse with which side to put it. Of course, there is a big inscription “Prusa I3” on it, but participants immersed headlong into the assembly often did not pay attention to it. As a result, some printers had to be rebuilt at a pace (not completely, of course).

Electronics

The most crucial part. If you make a mess of something, you can easily burn a 3D printer controller or some sensors. Fortunately, in the native instructions there are color schemes, following which it is difficult to confuse anything.

Calibration

The printer is ready. All axes are working as expected, moving in the right direction. There comes the penultimate stage before printing - calibration. In fact, we need to adjust the working surface and the limit switch of the vertical axis so that in all points of the field the nozzle is at a distance of 0.3-0.5 mm.

Duration

Now about the time. Initially, we allocated 5 hours for everything about everything. This was to include the introductory lecture for 30-40 minutes, lunch, and the assembly itself. Oh, how wrong we were! The first event ended in the evening, at about 8 o'clock!

The second techno marathon took about the same. From this we can conclude that, on average, it takes about 8 hours to assemble the printer (if you dabble less and idle).

The final

And here are our satisfied participants with their 3D printers!

The team of the Polytechnic Department of the Youth Palace in Yekaterinburg



The team of the Center for Education and Professional Orientation of the Upper Pyshma



Team School No64 from Lesnoy



Team Center for Children's Art of Irbit



The team House of children's creativity October district of Yekaterinburg.



School Team No1 GO Zarechny

What are 3D printers working after techno marathon?

We ourselves, as the organizer, are terribly interested in the further fate of the assembled 3D printers. The very first review came from Leonid Gushchina - a teacher at the Robotrod of the Palace of Youth:

So, 3D printing technology came to our circle!
The 3D printer is calibrated and printed the first model: a small robot figure. In honor of the fact that this model is the first, she even received the name Yeryom. Well, meet our plastic friend!

Of course, the figure of the robot was not limited to:

On Wednesday we dabbled on model robot models))
And today we already printed mounts for servo drives:

And further:

Well, a 3D printer is really an extremely useful thing! And of course, you understand his work better when he collected it.
So thanks again to the organizers and experts for the techno marathon!

Thanks

• Thanks to Irina Zakirova - the main organizer of the event: “When you organize and hold an event, the result of which the participants are so pleased, you feel joy and pride in the quality of the work done. We did it!"
• Thanks to Alexey Samoylov, Head of Witbox Maker School ( Witbox Russia )
• Thank you to the Ural Polytechnic College for a great place to hold a techno marathon and help in organizing this event.
• Thanks to our experts: Oleg Evsegneev and Pavel Tomshin for their professional work. On March 5, volunteer guys - students and technical specialists helped the teams in the assembly: Fedor Zyablitsev, Ilya Bannikov and Igor Vormanov. Thanks a lot!
• Thanks to all the participants who, despite the fatigue and tension, have reached the end!

In the news

Techno-marathon for the assembly of 3D-printers even got into the local edition of Vesti-Ural:

What's next?

In the near future we plan to develop a small masterclass on modeling and 3D printing, which we will offer to all participants of the techno-marfon, or simply to the happy owners of 3D printers. Masterclass will be held on a separate day, and approximately take about 8 hours, including lunch and coffee breaks. The main purpose of such an event is to ensure that, upon returning to the school, the printer has a long queue for printing.

Application for participation

Well, the closest plan is to recruit a new group for a techno-marathon! For convenience, we have created a small questionnaire for the participant .

Write - if you are from Ekaterinburg or the Region. But also be noted if you are from other regions of Russia, and you for:
- schools,
- houses of creativity,
- club of robotics
- or another club - where children are involved,
It would be interesting to assemble a 3d printer. And if you do not have enough funds to participate - we will try to help, find sponsors.

For sponsors

In turn, for sponsors, if you want to support the development of 3D printing in schools in Yekaterinburg / region, or in your city - check this questionnaire: a questionnaire for patrons .

With all registered participants, the organizer Irina Zakirova will be sure to contact and discuss all the organizational issues.