Forming the Future

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PRINTER POWER—3D printing projects can be completed on campus, such
as at Duke University’s Innovation Co-Lab (main photo), or off campus, via
a company such as Shapeways (top right). Materials used for the projects
include various kinds of metals and plastics, as well as wax or porcelain.
UBmag.me/form

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FORMING
FUTURE
the
Behind the scenes of effective campus 3D-printing operations
By Brian Nadel
A
mid students cutting textiles, making shoes, firing ceramics
and making prints at the Parsons School of Design’s Making
Center in midtown Manhattan is a whole wall of 3D printers.
The 28,000-square-foot center’s 15 MakerBot printers churn out
everything from jewelry and lacey sculptures to small figurines and architec-
tural models.
Having all the printers in one place is important for both service and cost.
“We can take advantage of the volume and offer everything students need
while saving money,” says Will McHale, director of the Making Center.
As a result, the $15 million center is one of the busiest places on the school’s
urban campus.
3D printing may be new to many higher education administrators, but for
students it’s already old hat, as they were likely introduced to it in middle or
high school. “3D Printing has changed dramatically over the past couple of
years,” says Jesse Roitenberg, national education manager at Stratasys, a provider
and consultant for 3D printers. “There are more low-cost options, which has
led to elementary and middle schools purchasing, which has led to the high
schools, colleges and universities having to step up their game.”
Technology consultant Terry Wohlers estimates the industry saw over
$6 billion in sales in 2016 and is growing at 17 percent a year. Colorado-based
Wohler Associates, his marketing and analysis firm, tracks 113 higher ed pro-
grams that offer 3D printing.
The 3D printing concept of additive manufacturing turns the established
industrial world on its head. Rather than traditional subtractive manufactur-
ing—where material is removed with saws, milling machines or other vener-
able techniques to reveal the final object—3D printing builds the object a tiny
(often microscopic) layer at a time based on a computer-generated design. It’s
not only more precise but produces less waste.
TECHNOLOGY

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TECHNOLOGY FORMINGTHE FUTURE
“It’s the future of making things,” says
Elliott Levine, distinguished technologist
at HP. “Every student deserves the oppor-
tunity to at least try it out or at best be-
come an expert. Hardly a department in
the modern university is untouched by the
3D printing revolution.”
As with any technology with a grow-
ing presence on campus, it’s important for
administrators to consider best practices
for 3D printing so the institution gets its
money’s worth.
Beyond engineering
Engineering, materials science, design and
software departments adopted 3D printing
early. Now, art, architecture, anthropology
and medical students increasingly use the
technology to visualize and create compli-
cated forms. In fact, the range on campus
is astounding, with biology researchers
printing protein models to see how they
might fit together and paleoanthropolo-
gists recreating the skull of an ancient an-
cestor that lived 2 million years ago.
When multiple disciplines use print-
ers, campuses should strongly consider
consolidating the devices in a 3D lab.
Duke University’s Innovation Co-Lab,
for example, houses 60 3D printers that
can produce a variety of items in different
materials. “Putting them all in one place
allows us to have the variety of equip-
ment needed and staff it with technicians
to help students get it right,” says Evan
Levine, the lab’s director.
Students can walk in with a design on
a memory stick or upload it to the lab’s
cloud servers for printing. Last year, the
lab executed 13,000 print jobs. Users can
typically pick up their completed item in
a day or two.
The University of Texas at El Paso’s
WM Keck Center for 3D Innovations
puts the emphasis on its staff and on
preparing the designs for printing. “We
spend a lot of time prepping the files and
combining smaller parts together to take
advantage of larger machines,” says David
Espalin, associate director of the WM
Keck Center. “Being thoughtful about
how they’re utilized lets us get by with
fewer printers.”
In fact, HP’s Levine claims that using
the latest large-format 3D printers lets
campuses save as much as 50 percent com-
pared to smaller desktop systems that are
cheaper to acquire but more expensive to
operate. “This economy of scale helps to
keep costs under control,” he says. Such
printers are available from HP as well as
Stratasys and MakerBot.
Fee models
It may be called printing, but there are few
similarities between paper and 3D devices.
Rather than completed jobs piling up in
the printer’s output tray for students and
faculty to pick up, a technician needs to
carefully remove the previous job from the
printer, re-level the system and check on
the raw material supply before starting the
next project. Factoring in the estimated
30 minutes of maintenance per week that
each system requires, 3D printing can be a
labor-intensive operation.
As 3D printing spreads across the cur-
riculum, how students pay for their cre-
ations is a work in progress. At the mo-
ment, it seems like no two schools have
the same policy. For instance, Duke
doesn’t charge students and treats the cost
of the machines, staff and raw materials as
part of the university’s infrastructure. In
contrast, Parson charges students based
It all adds up: The mechanics of 3D printing
The essence of 3D printing is a concept called additive manufacturing that builds
up the item one layer at a time. Regardless of whether it happens in a printer
that costs $1,000 or $150,000, the process starts with a digital file that defines
the item’s shape and divdes it into tiny slices. The most prevalent types of 3D
printers are:
• Fused deposition. Easily the most popular on campus, these printers force
polylactic acid or other polymers through a tiny nozzle that moves back and forth
over the model, building up material layer by layer.
• Stereolithography. This specialty printer uses UV lasers to activate a hardening
chemical in the raw material as the model is created a slice at a time. A variant
of this uses digital light processing elements similar to those used in classroom
projectors to form the image.
• Selective laser sintering. Similar to stereolithography, these printers start with
a powered raw material that’s built one layer at a time as a laser scans over the
item consolidating the material.
• Binder jetting. Invented at MIT and commercialized by HP, this technique builds
up the input powder layer by layer as it is sprayed with a hardening chemical.
ONE OF A KIND—Created from 840
individually printed pieces of a cement
composite, a 12-by-12-foot temple-
like structure that resides in a UC
Berkeley courtyard was a collaborative
architecture school project. Stainless
steel hardware holds the blocks in place.

4. www.universitybusiness.com June 2017 | 31
on the volume or weight of the raw ma-
terials used and the type of 3D printer. A
4-ounce project might cost about $35.
The 3D printing lab at Texas State
University’s Alkek Library takes a hybrid
approach to fees: charging for the raw
materials and the time needed to create
the item. A 4-ounce prosthetic arm, for
example, would cost a student $115 to
make. This covers only the raw materials
and upkeep on the machinery—the rest
of the expense is covered by the school’s In-
structional Technologies Support budget,
says Scott Johnson, the lab coordinator.
Print it somewhere else
Campus officials contemplating shelling
out several million dollars to outfit a 3D
lab might consider an alternative: out-
sourcing some or all of the printing. There
are dozens of off-site services—including
Shapeways, Selecto and Voodoo Manufac-
turing—that print 3D items for colleges.
“The upside is that there’s little or no
cost to the school’s infrastructure and the
price of the models produced are competi-
tive,” says Lauren Slowik, education design
evangelist at New York-based Shapeways,
which has relationships with hundreds of
colleges. Some retain the service for all 3D
printing; others use it during the busy pe-
riod at the end of the semester or for spe-
cialty materials, like platinum or sandstone.
While most schools have only two or
three different printing materials, Shape-
ways can work with 60.
After receiving the item’s printing file,
Shapeways creates the object and ships it
to the student in a couple of days. A bonus
is that students who register with the com-
pany using their college email address get
a 15 percent discount. The company also
offer grants to students with interesting
designs. Plus, for budding entrepreneurs,
Shapeways will sell student designs on its
marketplace website.
Startup stimulus
The 3D printing effort at UTEP further
blurs the line between school and com-
merce with America Makes, its in-house
3D printing business. Anyone can up-
load a file to order just about any sort of
3D model, but the intent is not to turn
3D printing into a profit center for the
college. The goal is to provide on-the-
job training for students who are highly
sought after by industry, Espalin says.
“The real idea is to give students the
experience of working in a 3D manufac-
turing environment,” he adds. “It turns
learning into manufacturing.”
And that’s what higher education
should be all about: anticipating the needs
of next-generation students with novel
instruction and training. They not only
can master 3D printing, but also will
launch the next wave of multibillion dol-
lar companies that make everything from
custom eyeglass frames to an iPhone
car-adapter to a soap dish shaped like a
Roman Aqueduct.
CREATOR GENERATION—The interdisciplinary environment of the Making Center
at Parsons School of Design encourages students to become makers, innovators
and entrepreneurs. Besides 3D printers, the facility features a ceramics “wet lab,”
printmaking equipment, workspaces for developing and sharing ideas, and more.
Brian Nadel is a Pelham, New York-based
technology writer.
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