The Thing With Thingiverse
As a Makerspace teacher and coordinator I manage several 3D printers for student and teacher use. The issues related to 3D printers could fill several blog posts, so I’ll save those for another time, but the question of what can be printed is very much on my mind. A lot of those discussions center on the topic of Thingiverse.
For those new to 3D printing, thingiverse.com is a site where people post and share 3D models that they have created so that others can download and print them. Models are free, though you can “tip” the designer if you choose to, and sometimes they are offered as works in progress. You can find functional objects like this set of measuring tools , replacement parts like this tool box latch, decorative objects like this bracelet. You can even download and print prosthetic hands.
For some makerspace teachers I’ve spoken to, allowing students to download something from Thingiverse is akin to letting them download an essay and turn it in for credit. Some consider it the same as allowing students to cut and paste copyrighted material from the internet and not credit it (it’s not by the way). Students should print an attribution tag only if they display it in public. Some consider it a waste of time and material to print worthless stuff that didn’t take any effort to create. I think a deeper look at the whole situation is necessary to understand the place of Thingiverse in the Maker Ed Curriculum.
Assertion 1: Thingiverse is full of bad design
The maker movement includes a great willingness to share. It takes more from the arts than technology in this sense. Certainly there are plenty of businesses with patented products that arise out of makerspaces, but often makers share out ideas, knowledge and skills as well as products. This may come from the fact that many makers get their start working in makerspaces or hackerspaces that tend to be non-profit, dues or membership based communities with shared tools and resources. It’s hard to justify protectionist impulses when you can’t make your ideas a reality without benefiting from communal pooling of resources.
The fact that everything on Thingiverse is offered for free leads to the reality that there is a lot of poorly designed junk on the site. It is easy for students to look at the title of a design, like “iPhone 6 SE case”, and the first picture, and say, “perfect, let’s download and print that!” only to have the result be a poorly fitting, easily breakable phone case that turns into plastic waste. The Thingiverse skeptic looks at this and says, “see, Thingiverse is full of useless junk and is a waste of time.”
My response to this is to ask, how is that different than a trip to the mall or a visit to Amazon.com? Just because we are paying money for something in a store or e-commerce site is no guarantee that we are getting quality goods. We try and teach our kids to be discerning shoppers; to judge the cost of something vs. the potential value of the thing. We read reviews, we ask questions, we ask our friends who have purchased similar items and we eventually make a decision. Those kids who throw their money away on junk should quickly learn the value to using critical thinking when making purchases.
As many terrible designs as there are on Thingiverse, there are plenty of great ones as well. Rather than teach our kids that Thingiverse is bad, we should teach them how to discern the good from the bad.
Assertion 2: Downloading from Thingiverse is cheating
First of all, from a purely legal standpoint, this is not true unless a student literally turns it in claiming they designed it themselves. Objects on Thingiverse are under the Creative Commons license and can be used by anyone. If you publicly display another persons work you should attribute it, but using and modifying it for your own purposes is perfectly legal. A bit more thorny is the issue of designers making highly accurate copies of copyrighted material and sharing it for free on Thingiverse, which is attracting the attention of some large companies like Disney.
But what most people who make this argument mean is that it’s too easy to get a product or design without putting the work in to make it. You find this argument made most often by teachers and professionals with CAD (Computer Aided Design) experience. I find this argument particularly baffling since we are not exactly in a culture that requires people to make their own clothing, dishes and furniture (things that are very much within our power to make) much less TV’s and smart phones. Even if I am able to shape and fire my own mugs and plates, it may well be worth my money and time to purchase some that are more attractive, more dishwasher safe or more durable. I have a certain level of skill creating CAD designs, but I know my limits. If I have the ability to discern good designs on Thingiverse, and know that my skills are not yet up to the level of what I find there, isn’t it just good common sense to use someone else’s design? Just because I recognize someones good design doesn’t mean I will stop trying to get better as a designer.
Problem 3: Students won’t learn to design for themselves if they can just download from Thingiverse
This is probably the most convincing argument behind not allowing Thingiverse in the classroom. The basic idea is that students are essentially lazy and are looking for the quickest and easiest way to get something; and if that something is “free”, even better! In this scenario you can see Thingiverse as a way for students to shortcut their way through the new 3D printing revolution leading to intellectual stagnation and possibly the downfall of civilization itself.
I got into teaching in a makerspace largely because of 3D printing. I’ve been an artist and a maker for as long as I can remember but the trigger that led me to design a makerspace that could truly reach every student in the school was an issue with two 3D printers. They weren’t being used. They sat in a room, having been donated to the school the year before, and created practically nothing. There was one teacher who knew how to use them (not me) and a few students who had used them as a club after school. As 3D printers go they were nothing special, but they had the potential to create objects practically out of thin air. Students could learn about them, learn from them and learn what their possibilities could be. But not if they were never used.
In order to get these things used and contributing to the school, I decided the bar had to be lowered to their use. They needed to be de-mystified so that students and teachers had a conception of how they could be used as well as how to go about using them. I tinkered with them to get familiar myself, and then created a system where students and teachers were able to ask me to help them print things. At the same time I looked for a variety of ways to make getting content to print easier for all involved. Thingiverse was one of these and entry level CAD programs like 3D Builder, Sculptris and TinkerCAD are others.
My belief is that if you leave a 3D printer out and available for kids to use, a small portion that are truly interested will take the initiative to learn about it and what it can do. They will likely learn to do the CAD necessary to create their own designs and obviously launch into a wonderful career in the 3D printing future. On the other hand, if you make it easy for every student to 3D print something, not only will the truly interested students use it and develop CAD skills, but many other students who did not even know they were interested may embark on the same journey. Just because some students don’t design their own objects doesn’t mean more students overall aren’t put on a path to do just that. In the end you’ve lost nothing but some filament and you may have created a transformative experience for a number of students. Anecdotally, at least, I’ve seen evidence that this approach works.
How I use Thingiverse in an educational makerspace.
So how do I lower the bar to using the technology while still encouraging students to go farther and learn more? Here is my 3 step approach:
- The first time a student wants to print something with the school printer and filament, let them download something from Thingiverse or other such site. I talk to them about the potential issues with Thingiverse design (especially phone cases!) and encourage them to be discerning. This will be their one freebie so if that phone case breaks after ten minutes, so be it.
- From here on if they want to print something with the school printer and filament, it has to be something they have modified, personalized or created from scratch. This could be as simple as embedding their name or words in an existing model using 3D Builder, or sculpting it from a digital ball of clay with Sculptris. Student have now seen what the printer can do and how easy it can be to create something to be printed.
- For students who have created a design from scratch, the choice is now theirs. If they find something on Thingiverse that will do the trick, they are welcome to print it. If not, they can design it themselves. The fact is, the most wasted filament and failed prints comes from these most advanced students as they prototype, reprint and push the boundaries of what the machine can do. I feel like it’s a cost worth bearing.
As a side note, any student who wants to purchase their own filament and has the knowledge of how to install it in the machine can make their own decisions on how to use it.
I believe that 3D printing and manufacturing will seriously, perhaps fundamentally, change the way we make things in the world. It is already having significant impacts on industry and as printing high volume metal parts improves in efficiency and quality it will become even more important. We will need a generation of students to learn how this technology works and how to create designs for it. Requiring students to to walk a narrow and overly rigorous path in order to be a part of this movement seems counterproductive to me. I believe the way to foster this generation is to cast a wide net with as many ways for students to gain experience, become curious, and generate excitement as possible.
Do you teach making or have a 3D printer in your classroom or school? What do you think about Thingiverse? How do you encourage CAD skills while making the technology seem approachable? I’d love to read any comments you have.
