During the 2017-2018 school year, PCF greatly enhanced our 3D Printing offering. In order to do so, we purchased a new printer that allows us to print more objects at the same time and it is much faster.
We provided classes during and after school at Edmonds, Logan, Emlen and Mifflin.
Since printing still takes a long time, the objects are printed at our office after they are created. So students may finish something one week and we then print them at our place and bring them with us the next time we meet.
We strongly believe these classes enhance the students’ ability to use the mouse and computer which ultimately will help them when they take their exams on the computer. So besides learning about graphics software, student greatly benefit from learning how to operate the computer faster and more efficiently.
We have also consistently found that the more ‘difficult’ students excel in our classes. We are not sure why but it is possible they are bored in their regular classes or perhaps they behave better so they are allowed to stay. Below is a good example by one of the toughest kids in his respective school. He built this house by himself after just a couple of sessions, exceeding his fellow classmates by several weeks.
Some of the other creations by students are shown below. We always start students off by making keychain tags. Then once students are allowed to do their own thing, potato bag clips, fidget spinners and Minecraft gear are always very popular.
Some group pictures of Edmonds and Logan school students below.
Thank to the generous support from our donors, we were able to purchase a new, faster 3D printer (see Makerbot below). This new printer remains in our office as it is too heavy to carry around (plus we would not want it to get damaged in transit). We still bring our original small (Cube) printer to the schools so that the students can see for themselves how they work.
