3d printer? how would you use it?

Very often, talking to people who see that I have built a 3d printer, I get asked this question “what can you do with it?”.

Doing a simple search on the web we see that there are many sites that provide for free hundreds of drawings of objects reproducible with a 3d printer. The site, I think the richest of these projects, is in my opinion Thingiverse, a community open to all those who want to try their hand at designing and drawing aimed at 3d printing, both experienced cad users and newbies on the subject. On the site you will find everything, from cellphone stands, to the famous and useful USB cable reels, earphone holders, raspberry or arduino cases, covers for most of the cellphones on the market and obviously supports for the now widespread intelligent assistants.

Thingiverse is divided into sections, so it can be consulted by categories and offers a bit of everything, from gadgets to objects for the home, from learning to games, in short, a multitude of things that can be achieved with a 3d printer.

In fact, as soon as the first 3d printer was built, I received requests from practically the whole neighborhood and various parents of personalized covers for mobile phones, various key rings, toys for children and many other similar objects, in short, things that, even if cute and funny, did not seem to me give enough value to 3d printing.

For this reason I started looking for things a little more interesting to make and I came across the classic little robots made with Arduino, various sensors and motors of all kinds.

In fact, there are many projects that combine 3d printing, a minimum of electronics knowledge, a fair dose of manual skills, a bit of programming and that allow you to build robots mostly for educational purposes. Always searching on the web you can find many other interesting things also on other sites such as instuctables.

For example, an instuctables user has designed and built a robot vacuum cleaner that he called PANDA or even a nasal aspirator for children or there are those who have made a portable electocardiograph and who have even rebuilt a damaged carapace of a turtle. Another example that summarizes the four capabilities I mentioned earlier is the project of a maker who managed to control a computer with just the blink of an eye … think about possible applications. I obviously could not leave out FABLE, a myoelectric prosthesis made with a 3d printer. To go back to things done only with a 3d printer, it is interesting and useful a system that in a very simple way provides the water needs of a plant, for example in a period when we are not at home. In short, many things can be done, it strongly depends on our abilities, on our potential but above all ……. on our imagination.

If you want to share your experiences and your works with us, sign up and send us the photos to the email indicated below, we will publish and share them to better understand the use of the 3d printer and its potential; even if you don’t have a 3d printer yet but you are curious about the topic, tell us what you would like to do with it and for what purposes you would use it.

 

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