Day 333: Solid modeling course day 3

My 3D printer still working hard, but I’m still having troubles!

Yesterday was the last day for my solid modeling class and surprisingly I got more questions than the previous days so that made me very happy. Today is my 3D printing course, so we’ll talk about how that went tomorrow (and push back our online 3D printing course by a day sadly).

It looks like we’re nearing the end of my lecture series. I took on the most from the lab, but I think it worked out, I really enjoyed my solid modeling course even though things didn’t always work out the way I planned. We went over an example I hadn’t practiced beforehand even though I told myself I wasn’t going to do that since we didn’t have the time, but it worked out (mostly) so that was good. It was just a simple lamp design, but it was fun.

I got to show off some of the other things I’ve solid modeled in the past, which was nice. I also got to talk about different applications for solid modeling, such as art, science communication, and things like that, it’s not just for engineering basically even though that is my primary use for solid modeling.

The nice thing about the order I set for my classes is that now that (hopefully) the people who took my course got to design a few solid models of their own, we can save those and import them into the 3D printing software and I can show them how to slice their models for 3D printing.

Basically the plan for today is just to go over the major technologies, the hurdles that have come up, and ways to work within the tech. It should be a good course and I’m hoping we have more interaction than I did the first couple of lectures I did.

Bottom line, I think the solid modeling course went well since it was the first (ish) time I’ve taught the class. I’m hopeful my 3D printing course will go just as smoothly. On the brightside, it’s just a single lecture, so even if it goes awful, it’s just the one.