Thank You Voices!

Students get up-close with Olimpico’s large 3D printer.

Now that the holiday season is upon us, we have wrapped up a successful first session of Olimpico’s 3D printing program at Voices.

Voices students made great progress in our twelve-week enrichment session. Students came into the course with no practical experience in 3D printing, CAD or design concepts. When pre-assessments were conducted for this course, students had little to no understanding of any of the course material. Few students had heard of 3D printers, and less had ever even seen one. No student had ever used Tinkercad or any other CAD program.

By the end of the course, within ten weeks, students were able to create custom designs using Tinkercad, manipulate 3D viewports, conceptualize two and three-dimensional concepts and write custom design-briefs to outline and depict their projects.

Sample student project. To complete this mini-figure head, students needed to learn how to conceptualize 3D space and view manipulation, design concepts, as well as working with precise and required measurements and project specifications.l

Students were also exposed to design thinking concepts, as they conceptualized and completed projects from the bottom-up, starting with a design-brief — where they sketched out design ideas, described their ideal audience for their prototype, and pre-planned measurements for their project. Students were also exposed to prototyping concepts, as they output designs, learning how improvements could be made to create optimal prints.

Finally, students were so excited to experiment with two different types of 3D printers -from our special lesson with the co-founders of Toybox, as well as Olimpico’s Type A Machines printer. One of the highlights of the course were the lessons where students got up close and personal with a 3D printer, learning the mechanics of their operation, and observing objects printing out in real-time.

Check out some highlights from the course below:

A student custom designs a propeller in Tinkercad.

Students work on designing their own custom name-tags.

Before students were able to create their own 3D objects and prints, they had the chance to take home prints from Thingiverse, such as this Eiffel Tower 3D print.