Tag: fab lab

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New Resources: A Fabulous Lab

FAB-TASTIC.

This week, we got a formal introduction to the Fab Lab. The director of the Fab Lab had previously been a guest speaker in the class, but this time we had a chance to host the class there and use their facilities. We first started with a tour of the place and the different tools they had there. They first went through their policies for use, which was surprisingly accessible. Most tools were only priced at $1 for use, and they allowed people to use their own materials while also having some for sale.

In terms of the tools, the staff went through the multiple applications of the electric cutter, which could not only be used to cut vinyl stickers, but also precision paint things if the knife part was replaced. Next, they showed us the screen printing and embroidering/sewing areas. They also introduced us to the concept of 3D printing on top of meshed fabric, which has been used a lot in the fashion industry recently (seen green scales picture for an example). Next, they showed us the milling, soldering, and electronics area, where they showed some applications, such as milling your own circuit board or working with microcontrollers. Finally, they brought us to the 3D printing and laser engraving workstations. Overall, it was really inspiring to see all these different technologies consolidated in a single area as well as to hear about many of the different projects that have been created at the lab. I was shocked to find out about such an untapped resource that I had not known that I could take advantage of as a resident of the Champaign-Urbana area.

FABRICATION IN PROGRESS.

After our brief but thorough tour, we were split into two groups to attend workshops run by the staff of the Fab Lab. I attended the workshop relating to using the laser engraver as well as the program used to vector model what we want to engrave, Inkscape. Inkscape is an open source program which is quite similar to Adobe Illustrator and allows people to vector model their illustrations; I found it really fascinating that the Fab Lab intentionally uses a lot of open source software so that when they teach people how to use their programs, the skills will continue to be applicable outside of the Fab Lab.

Within Inkscape, we started modelling an exercise watch made out of wood which would be able to track if outpatients are performing their exercises correctly. There will be motion sensors inside the watch, where if the face is facing one way, it would detect bicep curls and facing another way, wrist twists. We first modelled the watch face together while the instructors introduced us to the program, and once we started to become more familiar with Inkscape, the staff released us to add our own designs to the watch. We were instructed to keep the user base in mind and make our unique designs while thinking of certain groups, such as children or elderly outpatients.

With the last 45 minutes of class, we started brainstorming prototypes for our team products. While brainstorming, our TA Mehmet wanted us to think of new ideas quickly, never spending too much time on a single idea. We were instructed to brainstorm in different rounds with different restrictions. For example, one round we had to think as if we had a $0 budget, another if we had an unlimited budget, and yet another if we had to think of our product with children in mind. In the end, we then had to decide which prototype we thought would be the most feasible, easiest to implement, and most effective and decide based on individual team members’ decisions which prototype to make a crude 3D prototype of. In the end, Solestice decided to go with a sole that is attachable by Velcro strips to a shoe, and we will be making this prototype before the next class.

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Ideation

This Wednesday, we participated in a workshop from Autodesk representatives on Fusion 360, an integrated CAD software. We were tasked with creating a phone holder. The representative leading the workshop walked us through the steps to design the phone holder. We are going to print them in the MakerLab later this week. I love this course because we are able to design and create things that we (or others) can actually use. You can see the phone holder I designed here.

Autodesk workshop where we designed phone holders in Fusion 360. The image on the screen is the phone holder we designed.

In addition to designing the basic holder, we also had the opportunity to customize it. We could choose a material, paint colors, add decals, etc. This was my first time utilizing any CAD software, and I really enjoyed it. I thought the Fusion interface was very simple and intuitive. However, I have heard that this is not the case with other CAD softwares. I would love to learn different softwares and see how they differ form each other.

After the workshop, we had about 45 minutes to work with our teams to create “How Might We” statements. We used the post-it notes from last class to help us write them. My team narrowed our work down to 3 “How Might We” statements. These statements are an essential part of the Ideation phase of the design process, so we are testing if our idea to create a tread for prosthetic users will work. This activity challenged us to not be too broad nor too specific. We found it difficult to find a balance. I am looking forward to the next few weeks in the Fab Lab to continue our project!

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Week 5 Recap – Inspiration, Innovation, and Implementation

Week 5 was an information overload as we heard from 4 speakers about potential partnerships, campus resources, innovation in the 3D printing space, and the human-centered design process.

New Opportunities

Our first speaker was Sneha Subramanian from Illini Service Dogs. She gave a great presentation about the needs that her organization faces for cheap and innovative solutions to problems that their dogs face every day. A few ideas she mentioned were redesigning collars and leashes, easily attachable and detachable leashes to wheelchairs, and easier ways for dogs to open cabinet doors. While no group ended up taking Illini Service Dogs on as their mentor this semester, the presentation was still very informative and I hope that future classes choose to tackle these problems!

3D Printing Innovation

Our next speaker was John Hornick, author of 3D Printing Will Rock the World, and an acclaimed speaker on innovation in the 3D printing space. John’s presentation focused on the innovation, customization, and democratization of 3D printing and its impact on the world. He talked about how the democratization of 3D printing has been a catalyst for customization and innovation within the space. One notable example he gave was of a 5-year-old named Cameron Haight who was born without an arm. Cameron has customized his prosthetic with custom 3D printed attachments as a way of expressing himself. He has even 3D printed prosthetics for other kids like him. Here 3D printing has been used as a way for little kids to be proud of their prosthetics and what makes them unique. John also went on to talk more about the future of the industry. He mentioned how 3D printing in healthcare is moving towards substitutes which attempt to improve functionality, instead of replacements which simply mimic it. One interesting example he gave was of a molecular self-assembly project conducted by the University of London that is using 3D printing and human cells to create bio-mechanical structures. Overall, John’s talk was very informative and we were very lucky to him present to our class.

Exploring Resources

Jeff Ginger was our third speaker of the day and he told us about his job as director of the Fab Lab at the University of Illinois. The Fab Lab is a maker space on campus that houses many different tools that students and community member can use to build things. Our CU Fab Lab is part of a larger global network of Fab Labs that share best practices and aim to democratize making to everyone. The students in our class have varying experience levels with the Fab Lab so it was helpful to learn about the full range of services they offer. One thing that stuck out to me about Jeff’s talk was the concept of DIWO, or Do It With Others. This concept perfectly embodies our class and our approach to making. Through Yellowdig, blog posts, and class presentations we are encouraged to all work together to share ideas and best practices. This process helps keeps us accountable to the true needs of our mentors and ensures that we come up with the best possible solution. Before this class, I thought that design was a very individual process, but now I see that design takes a lot of people in order to succeed.

Human Centered Design Process

The final speaker of the day was our TA Mehmet Aydin. His presentation focused on the principles of Human Centered Design and how we can apply the process to our own projects. One of his main points was about the process of diverging and converging ideas in multiple iterations to get to the best possible outcome. The diverging process involves creating choices, while the subsequent converging process forces you to pick from that pool of choices. He also brought up a unique example of how simple solutions can be the most effective. Mehmet shared the story of how little kids were scared of using MRI machines and were having trouble laying still throughout the whole process. Instead of redesigning the whole MRI machine, doctors made the experience fun for kids by decorating the machine as a pirate ship or space ship and pretending that the kids had to stay still as part of a game. This made the experience fun for the kids and yielded more accurate scan results.

Mehmet’s presentation on Human Centered Design

Trying It Out

After Mehmet’s presentation, our class split up into our teams to try the Human Centered Design process for ourselves. We started by recounting the interviews our teams had conducted over the past few weeks and identifying the issues, motivators, and barriers surrounding our need and need groups. After using the “diverge” stage to come up with as many ideas as possible, our next task was to group our findings into segments. This part of the process helped us organize our thoughts and see broad trends across our needs. This exercise was a valuable learning process for all of the teams and it helped us identify main needs and areas where we still needed to conduct interviews to receive more information.

  • Team Evinco
  • Team 3D Bal
  • Team Solestice
  • Team Movi

Thank you to all of the presenters who took the time to share their experiences with our class!

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Week 5: 3D Printing Makes Things Possible

The class in this past week was filled with presentations and activities. There were four presentations in class in this past week, including (1) a presentation from the Illini Service Dogs about the needs of the organization, (2) a presentation from John Hornick, the author of 3D Printing Will Rock the World, focusing on the changes that 3D printing, 3D scanning, and bioprinting brought to the medical industry, (3) a presentation from Jeff Ginger of the Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab about the network and the tools we can get from the fab lab, and (4) a presentation and leaded activity on the process of design thinking/human-centered design from the TA Mehmet Aydin. Out of these four presentations, two of them were extremely memorable to me: the presentation from John Hornick and the presentation from Jeff Ginger.

3D Printing’s Impact on Medical Industry

3D Printed prosthetic hand, soft touch, more realistic looking hand.

Prior to John Hornick’s presentation, I knew that 3D printing technology is becoming more famous as it allows the way of production changes. I have not noticed that it brings so many changes to the health and medical industry, especially in helping people in need. I found many examples he mentioned memorable to me. The first was the 3D printing for prosthetics because it was something that we previously mentioned.

3D Printed skin for facial reconstruction & 3D printed frontal forehead

The second part that was memorable to me was the customization feature of 3D printing. The facial reconstruction that allows people who severely injured to regain the ability to return to a normal life is very inspiring and hopeful in my perspective. The stories make me think about our power in making changes and helping people who are in need. It may be hard for us to design products that can change the medical industry at this point, but we can definitely use this powerful technology to try to improve the quality of life of people in general.

Introduction to Fab Lab

Jeff Ginger’s presentation mainly focuses on the introduction to the fab lab. In this introduction, we learned that the fab lab has a lot of great tools for “innovators”. More importantly, the fab lab is opened to the public. This means that anyone in the community will have access to the amazing tools that he or she can use for designing a product and producing a product at a low cost. This encourages rapid prototyping and production as well as lowering the cost of production. This reminds me of my experience in the IMPACT Labs, a maker-space partnering with WeWork, in the WeWork building. It provides high-end technologies and expertise that can allow entrepreneurs and companies to bring their concept into a production-ready product. There are a lot of high-end technologies in this maker-space, which is very similar to what technologies the fab lab can offer. I was amazed by the high-end technologies I saw when I was in the IMPACT Labs in Israel back then. Now, I think that it is really amazing to know that we have such high-end technologies available in our community too.

IMPACT Labs Logo Under the WeWork Building
The companies that cooperate with the IMPACT Lab and use the IMPACT labs
  • 3D Printers in the IMPACT Labs
  • 3D Printed House Model
Laser Cutting Machine in the IMPACT Labs
3D Scanning of boat prototype in IMPACT Labs
3D Scanning of a Boat Prototype in the Impact Labs in Israel

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Two Roads Diverged, And I Made Peace With The Idea Of Not Trying Both

INFO-MANIA.

This week, we had four presentations: one from a Sneha Subramanian of Illini Service Dogs, John Hornick (author of 3D Printing Will Rock the World), one from Jeff Ginger of the CU Community Fab Lab and the Illinois Informatics Institute, and one from our TA Mehmet Aydin. In line with our focus on human centered design, Illini Service Dogs (ISD) had some ideas, specifically about improving disabled people’s ability to independently work with service dogs, that they were hoping to collaborate with us on. John Hornick gave us incredible insight on the meta-trends within the 3D printing industry. The three main trends that John has observed to be true of the 3D printing industry are: 1.) 3D printing spurs innovation 2.) 3D printing increases democratization and 3.) 3D printing is all about customization. John informed us on the many different groundbreaking 3D printing projects going on all around the world in pretty much every field you could think of, and it was really inspirational to hear about all these success stories and incredible innovation. I was especially intrigued by his mentioning of research in bioprinting replacement organs, an idea that I had actually looked into six years ago for a high school biology assignment. Listening to John’s presentation reminded me of all the different angles we would need to look into for our project but also reminded me of the endless possibilities – opportunities – that we have when working with 3D printing.

One of our four presentations: Mehmet teaching us about how to go about thinking while we create our product.

The next presentation was from Jeff Ginger, whose high energy and excited gestures were refreshing after absorbing so much information in such a short amount of time. Jeff let us know about the network of Fab Labs as well as the amazing resources we have available to us at the CU Community one. It was kind of shocking to realize that there were so many resources available to us as UIUC students that I did not previously know about! Jeff was really passionate about his work, and he had a way of talking that makes you want to quit whatever you’re doing and pursue fab lab creations full-time immediately, just from listening to him.  The passion that we saw from him for his projects is definitely something that I will remember and make sure that I also feel in any future projects that I work on. I want to be able to be someone who can inspire others to take a chance based purely on the energy from my own passions – just as Jeff did for me.

CONVERGING ON FEAR.

When Mehmet gave us his presentation, he taught us about design thinking. he mentioned the idea of diverging and converging, and then repeating the process. Through this, I learned that I personally find the converging process difficult. I love coming up with new ideas and the many different possible ways we can implement an opportunity, but my indecisiveness and lack of confidence in my own creative abilities tends to show when I have to make a decision on which one to proceed with. In other words, I often let the fear of failure and ‘doing something incorrectly’ get in the way of my decision-making process. This was something that I have always known about myself in the back of my mind, but never before have I had to confront it head on like this. It made me grateful for the insight of my other group members, the mentors of this class, and the course itself for giving me an opportunity to grow not just in knowledge but as a person. This is not a problem that will be solved by one presentation, but finally being able to acknowledge the problem is a start.

  • Solestice’s brainstorming session result.
  • Stories & Experience framework that we worked off of.

Besides personal growth, Solestice was able to analyze all the information we had gathered so far. Through the Stories & Experiences framework we were given, we were able to break down the emotions and the facts of our project. Being able to visualize information like this was really helpful in showing us which direction to take our tread attachment idea. We will definitely be using this method to organize all future thoughts on new information we acquire in the future, especially since we have just set up an interview with a teammate’s professor who makes shoes in his free time. Overall, this week was a week of confrontation and growth, of diverging from expectations and converging on a direction to take our project.