Our 3D Cube Printers Came In!!

With a collaborative grant writing effort from community members and library staff, we are proud to announce that we won 2 Cube 3D Printers from the Maker Lab Club in collaboration with the American Library Association, American Makes, and the Association of Science and Technology Centers.

We cannot believe how easy these were to set up. The first one took some extra time as we had to navigate around the new website to find the software, activate the printers, and calibrate it but we were able to figure it out in an hour. The 2nd printer took about 15 minutes! With the 25 free designs already preset for the Cube, we printed a chess piece Rook. It took an hour and a half to print. It even had a staircase inside, what great detail! The Cube has it's own software and design file name (not the standard .stl) so files designed elsewhere will have to go through their software before printing. Once it is ready, file transfer is done over a flash drive that is plugged in directly to the printer.

The printer isn't very noisy (about as noisey as our computer printers) and the smell of plastic was only prevalent when we were sitting pretty close to it at the desk. The only thing to check before printing is that the special glue was applied to the plate before printing. We love that they are lightweight, easy to transport, and we can buy the print cartridges at Staples if we need to. Hopefully the bright pink Cube will encourage girls to design.

There will be many program opportunities in the future for patrons of all ages to be able to come in and see the printer in action or attend a program to design their own pieces to print.

Check out our video to see the printing in real time.

3D Cube Printers Unboxed from Duxbury Free Library on Vimeo.

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LIBRARY AS MAKERSPACE

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