ExhibiTricks: The Museum Exhibit Design Blog: I love the idea of 3D printers, in a Jetsons/Sci-fi/World’s Fair type of way. The promise of using a tabletop device to create absolutely anything out of any material (even food!) is pretty amazing. The reality, however, is you can spend hours designing a widget the size of a quarter that then takes even more hours to print successfully on the 3D printer… only to often find out that it hasn’t. When they work, they’re magic, but they’re not that simple to operate.
3 comments:
I definitely see the point of this article- that institutions get a little too excited or ambitious when planning these maker spaces. They're trendy, and are starting to seem like a necessity in colleges and museums. I definitely think an institution shouldn't build a maker space if they don't have the means to support and repair it, but I don't think it matters if the technology or machinery is too complicated (as the article argues regarding 3D printers). If a place has a maker space but doesn't maintain it, it could repel students from every wanting to be involved in these newer technologies and is just a waste of resources. But if all the stuff is there but just too "difficult", it invites people to stay and challenge themselves and figure it out. "The Maker Movement" was never intended to be simple, and the defeatist tone at the beginning of this article is unhelpful.
To start off, if you are writing an article, keep it in article form instead of linking your readers to various places only for them to find out that all the information they needed was already on the original page. That being said, I am pretty confused by what this author is talking about. The advice is there, but the context is not.
For example, he mentions that 3D printers require staffing. Do museums not staff their 3D printers? I almost feel as though decides that expensive and easy to break can’t function without staffing unless you want to replace the thing multiple times a month. Even CMU, a university known for its technical prowess among other things, does not allow its adult students to run the Morewood makerspaces’ 3D printers without training (I believe). If any museums are allowing free-form 3D printer usage, even with children, something is severely wrong.
I wish the author of this article had given a picture of or described the atmosphere of the makerspaces he has experienced that caused him to write this article. I personally believe 3D printers are necessary due to its flashiness (it can attract visitors and it can make young kids interested in technology because they could find the device cool) in a museum environment.
Yes. To answer the title’s question, yes, well depending. I think that for people who want to and have the need to design an incricate design and could easily transfer that into a 3D printing, should get one. However, like any other piece of technology there are some things that a person can do or works better by hand on a 3D printer, some things that technology does efficiently more than a human. I think, sort of like a laser printer, a 3D printer is a good tool to have in your tool garage, but only use it when you need to or dabbling, and make sure to maintain it. You just have to keep in mind that whatever design you do on maybe, you need to transfer it to a 3D editor. You have to see how much time it takes, which including the wait for the 3D printer to finish, which could be as long about 9 hours.
Post a Comment