Extruding our way to a better world.
I’ve been working on a set of 3D printed molecules for studying point groups. The set below contains 12 molecules that represent some of the point groups commonly taught in undergraduate inorganic chemistry classes. The structures are made using Mathematica’s curated data sets and a few molecules pulled from other sources. I split the set into two series for printing, each taking about 3 h to print.
There’s a lot of buzz on the interweb about 3D-printing personal protective equipment (PPE) in light of the severe shortages across the country and especially close by to me. (I’m sure it has nothing to do with sending much of our supply to china last month.) I wanted to see how easy it was to actually do.
I’ve got my 3D printer, a Prusa MK2, up-and-running in my home office. I followed these instructions for making a mask and this design for the face shield. Both designs are reported to be printable without the use of supports or other fancy settings, so I loaded them on the build plate and off I went. After 5 hours of printing (3 for the mask, 2 for the shield) I ended up with this.
I’m surprised at how well these designs printed with no modifications needed. I’ve got some temperature calibration to tweak because both designs have overhangs that printed poorly but only affected the aesthetics of the final object. Double sided tape worked just fine to keep the document transparency in place. I’m now ready to fight the coronavirus … or clean the litter box.
Do you know what a film canister is? It’s a small plastic container that used to contain film. Do you know what film is? If you don’t, chances are you were born after 2003, which is about the time when digital photography overtook film photography. It’s interesting that the container that was used to store film has actually outlived the film itself; you can buy packs of film canisters on Amazon for about $0.50 a piece. They are useful for storage, art projects and film canister rockets.
Continue readingI’ve just gotten back from another wonderful BCCE conference (that’s Biennial Conference on Chemical Education) which was held at Notre Dame. It was a great opportunity to catch up with some friends and colleagues that I’ve missed since leaving CSU last year to join the College at Brockport.
I presented some of the work I’ve been doing on 3D printed periodic tables and will blog about their construction and use in the near future. There were some folks in the audience who wanted to get started right away with the objects, so I’ve posted them here on my website. You can download a zip file that contains 19 tables (about 3 MB).
The zip file contains the following periodic trends:
For the first four, there are four different sizes
As I build a collection of posts and materials for 3D-printed periodic tables, I will collect them here, so if you have interest in this project, bookmark that page.
Now that my students are wrapping up their summer research activities, it’s time to share some of my new designs. This one is inspired by my students – they wanted to design and 3D print keychains – and Rozenn’s request to have name tags for our plants.
Rosemary, thyme and sage, with a bit of patriotism to boot.
Read on to see how I designed these, which involved a little bit of magic for the swash ornament.