Mcgill University Team Promote DIY With 3D Printing

A lot has been written about 3D printing, its advantages and drawbacks, tools and techniques to be used with various 3D printers. What makes 3d printing so incredible? It is the ability to use to everywhere. Nowadays 3D printing is used in nearly any sphere of our life, be it medicine, construction or food production. 3D printing looks promising for medicine as it provides a new way to produce human organs for transplantation and thus overcome difficulties with organ donation. Moreover, 3D printing requires little material, so even most tangled designs can be successfully 3D printed and products, as a result, are cost-effective.

One of the positive sides of the growing 3D printing culture is development of do-it-yourself RepRap projects. They are connected with development and assembling affordable 3D printers and making use of 3D printed components. The ultimate goal of such projects is to design self-replicating 3D printers. Using all your imagination you can create nearly any design, or, you may as well choose the necessary digital model of the object available and get it 3D printed.

The guys whose campaign we are writing about are a group of 7 students from the McGill University who need to raise money to design a Delta RepRap 3D printer. Doing this they hope to promote awareness of DIY with 3D printing. They hope that if they raise enough money they will be able to produce a new RepRap 3D printer every semester with different teams of students involved. The printers are expected to be available at a price of printing material. Producing printers in teams students will learn how to design a printer of their own. Hopefully the campaign will allow the guys conduct tutorials for students in CAD paying particular attention to 3D printing. Furthermore they would like to organize competitions between the students of the university.

Currently they are working on a printer whose printing bed is 30cm in diameter and nearly 45cm in printing height. The carrier mechanism consists of three carrier plates, each having four wheels and two arms. The printing head comes into motion with three step motors and driving belts. The special software for Delta/Polar configuration controls the printing head and the carrier mechanism.

If you support the project with $40 or more, you will get a 3D printed keychain from the team as an expression of their gratitude.