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
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.
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.
3D Printers in the IMPACT Labs 
3D Printed House Model
I am a student who’s currently studying accountancy and management of information systems. I am graduating this year and entering the MAS program at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. I love programming and accountancy as much as I love taking photographs and learning how to play the Rubik’s cube. I love trying out new things and learning new skills. Learning how to make accessible designs utilizing digital making skills is one of the new skills I learned.
Hi Yingyi,
I strongly agree with your statement that we can utilize the technologies we have now to help improve the quality of life for the general public. I also thought that your experience at the IMPACT Lab was very interesting. I’ve visited the WeWork space in Chicago and it was cool to see all types of companies, such as Addidas, collectively sharing a space. Even though everyone has separate office spaces the integration of ideas and the accessibility that people have working there is truly innovative.