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3D Printing finally makes an appearance at the Duxbury Free Library

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Today, Kevin Osborn, Maker Extraordinaire, and his trusty 15 year old side kick, Max Tepermeister, came to explain the history and practical uses for 3D printers. In true Duxbury fashion, we had an audience who feels we should jump right into this technology and make it available to the patrons of the library, tout suite!

With two printers cranking out layers of melted filament, Kevin and Max gave us an inside look at the uses and creativity that 3D printing can inspire. The uses range from replacement human jaws to replacement parts in old cars and machinery to unique artistic creations in plastic, metal and ceramic. Who knew you could create in all these media in the 3D printing world?

Max MADE his 3D printer from scratch and tweaked it all summer long (did I mention that he's 15 and in the 10th grade?) and he was cranking out the pieces to this really cool interlocking spiral gear that looked kinda like the cross-section of an ammonite.... but I digress....

Patrons themselves are prompting the discussion on how the library might evolve into a Tinkering, Making, Creating Laboratory! This group will be just the people who can provide support, outreach and encouragement of our Makerspace transformation.

The afternoon was spent talking about movement activated Halloween lawn displays, Arduino and Raspberry Pi devices home-built to terrify and spook unwitting trick-or-treaters.  We built Larsen scanners for putting into Jack-o-Lanterns, (or cyclon heads depending on your sculpting skills). The soldering was tricky, mostly because we were using non-lead solder, which has to be heated up hotter than lead and is harder to direct on the board. Jessica and I are going to experiment with the two different types and do some reading on the lead dangers to see if there is a reasonable, non-poisonous trade off...













Reprap:  http://www.youtube.com/watchv=FSoexU_DlFQ  https://plus.google.com/102798926840375411636/postKevin's own blog is here:
                 http://baldwisdom.com/

Get digital designs here:
            http://www.thingiverse.com/



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