3D Printing

Technological advances in 3D printing will bring new opportunities to many industries, including, medical, engineering, automotive, aerospace and general manufacturing.  These advances are also an exciting development for makers, DIY enthusiasts, hobbyists and STEM educators.

We are excited that DLM-TIC gives the Orange County Library System the opportunity make this new technology available to our community.  We recently began the process by meeting with a 3D printing vendor and understanding FDM®.  Our team plans to thoroughly investigate various 3D printers and printing methodologies and to choose the most suitable model for our community.

If you would like to know what a 3D printer does, take a look at this video.

3 thoughts on “3D Printing”

  1. This is awesome! I’m going to ramble a bit here. If it will be for tinkering and the public, IMHO, I would go with a Makerbot printer. They have a website dedicated to sharing projects with others, http://www.thingiverse.com/. The possibilities are endless to create objects; from pieces to repair household items, all the way to cell phone cases. Classes for open source cad program, such as Google Sketchup, would be perfect. Those in the community could download it on their own PC and use it anytime to create. Proprietary software such as AutoCAD is very expensive. Will there be fees associated for use of the 3d printer when available?

    1. Hi Mike. Yes, we are excited about 3D printing capabilities and we enjoy checking out http://www.thingiverse.com. We offer a wide variety of technology classes here at OCLS and we appreciate your interest in future classes in open source CAD. We have not worked out the final details about 3D printing costs, but we do anticipate a charge to cover the cost of the materials. Thanks for your comments and please feel to share further ideas with us!

  2. Do you have a filament extruder? As in, a machine that recycles used or scrape PLA into new filament? I have a small 3D printer at home and would hate to waste the scrapes. I’d rather they be recycled. Those machines sell on amazon around $700 so I’m trying to find a source.

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