LIBRARY AS MAKERSPACE

I wanted to throw this one out there to the makerspace/Ultimaker community. Has anyone had experience printing food safe items? I just stumbled upon Cookie Caster , a free website to make your own cookie cutters and thought it would be a great program for the upcoming fall/winter holiday season. However, with some introductory research  from one of my co-workers, it seems like we might have to go with buying food safe filament.    Granted most of the plastic people use still has harmful chemicals like BPA even though it was FDA approved but that's a different rant for a different day. So the question is, if it is just a one time use cookie cutter, printed in regular PLA, with take some safety instructions, will it be OK? or should we venture food safe? Or should we just wait for more research......I think use-able bowls and cups are definitely out for the near future. On a fun food end note, our custodian is leaving who LOVES Cheez-Its so we're 3D printing him a b...

2nd attempt I have a glass water bottle that is very hard to clean because it has a small mouth opening. Normally I clean it with a paper towel attached to a chopstick. One of our staff found me cleaning it one day and said, "Why don't you 3D print something?" Why indeed! My idea was to take 2 toothbrushes, measure out the width and length of the bottom of the brushes with my trusty digital caliper, then make a long attachment so I can reach deep down without using my hand. I used pre-made shapes in tinkercad . My first attempt was a dud. It didn't fit inside the bottle! My second attempt with the entry holes very far down offered no support to the brushes and they just went willy nilly everywhere once I got inside the bottle. Now granted I could have taped them together or used elastics but this was not the point. all attempts So I figured, why not just use one toothbrush? The third attempt was a one hole design but the hole was too far down and the b...

Need to make an award?  Now that we have a 3D printer readily available, there are so many opportunities for customized giveaways/prizes that we would normally have to go out and purchase through companies like Oriental Trading. For our first egg drop last summer, we 3D printed medals that we designed in Tinkercad for the winners. Egg drops are really fun and low stress program since all you provide is the eggs and a tarp. We dropped contraptions kids made from home out the 2nd story window to see if their egg inside survived. Since that went over so well, next spring we made a Peep Award for our Book themed  Peep Dioramas . This was another stress free program as kids worked together at home to design the Peep dioramas and brought them in for judging and viewing. These shapes were very easy to combine in Tinkercad. I think in hindsight it would be nice to put lettering on it to say Duxbury Free Library and the year. During the annual summer Lego Contest  2 years r...