Hello everyone. I am Robin John, director of multiple tech startups and a physicist. I have catered to markets including but not limited to aerospace, additive manufacturing, UAVs, robotics and automation.
3D printing is a revolutionary prototyping technology that has found use cases in almost every industry I have worked in. Be it education, to boost student interest in technology and innovation, to industries from aerospace to consumer electronics requiring product development and prototyping. You could be an architect wanting to showcase your design in 3D to your manager, or you could be an entrepreneur who needs to 3D print the casing of your MVP. You could just be 3D printing for a hobby, and might randomly print an object that you might need once in a while. For example, have a look at this Nespresso capsule holder I printed recently. A similar holder would cost me around 15 euros at a retail store, while printing it at home, the major expense for me was the PLA material, which cost me less than 50 cents for this holder.
This course is for you if you are a beginner, curious about 3D printing, or a professional who wants to pursue additive manufacturing as a career. If you’re a non technical executive interested in technology and innovation, 3D printing is probably one of the most fascinating technology you can start with.
The course is aimed at basics of FDM printing which means fused deposition modelling, the most widely used 3D printing method. The aim is to gain an understanding of the technology inside out, so we will be looking at the construction of one of the popular DIY kits and understand the purpose of each hardware components. Next we will look at slicing software, understand the basic principles on how they operate and will try to set different parameters such as temperature, extrusion, wall thickness, supports and see how parts behave. We won’t go into designing or prototyping ourselves, we will leave that part for another workshop. We will use stock 3D CAD files from websites such as thingiverse to 3D print and understand the parameters. After, we will talk about maintenance of your machines and I’ll give you my personal troubleshooting pointers. And finally, we will close the chapter with some industry applications and use cases revolving around 3D printing.
