Cubes Conquer Stanford

April 18, 2013 deelip

By David Lewis

A year after their commercial debut at Stanford, the Cube Printers were back at “The Farm” and inspired an entirely new group of students with the possibilities of 3D Printing. Last year we were at Stanford for the Cool Product Expo and the MIT/Stanford VLAB event on 3D Printing. The Cube was a big hit and we knew it had a future.

This year we were back on campus to teach other students how the Cubes work and how they can use 3D printing in their own lives. Over the weekend we delivered three multi-hour workshops on CAD and 3D Printing. The workshops were led by a couple of high school freshmen (Riley & Vernon) who have been working the technology for more than two years now along with members of the current DCS 3D printing selective team. Maher Osman (his whole family), Travis Brunell, Michael Tuason, Alex Tuason, all joined Riley & Vernon to make this “teach-in” a success.

Students from a broad range of middle & high schools around Northern California came to the Stanford campus for two days of classes on a broad range of subjects ranging from “Special Relativity” to “Game Card Strategy”. The class on 3D Printing was completely sold out and we had to turn a lot of interested students away at the door.

Riley Lewis, a freshman at University Prep Academy and a good friend of 3D Systems brought four printers, four workstations and a huge amount of design and printing experience to the classroom. The participants learned a bit about the history of 3D Printing, the work-flow from original concept through printed object and then got hands-on time in groups to see what they could create.

Small initial designs and cell phone cases were popular items and by the end of each session we had to pry the students away from the printers to make room for the next class.