🖨️ 3D printing
At STEAM Night you can watch a 3D printer build something, one thin layer at a time. Draft
How it works
- A string of plastic goes into a nozzle at 215°C that melts it, like a super-precise hot-glue gun.
- The printer draws one flat layer 0.2 mm thin, about two sheets of paper, then moves up and draws the next one on top.
- A toy 2 cm tall is about 100 layers.
Try it at home
Ask a grown-up to help. You don't need a printer to start designing.
- Design your own in your browser, free: Tinkercad (opens another site)
- Find free designs other people made: Printables (opens another site)
- See how a 3D printer prints: National Geographic Kids: How Things Work (opens another site)
Have a printer, or know a library or makerspace with one? This one-page guide walks through it: find a design, slice it, copy it to the SD card, print.