CeBER Students attend 3D Printing Workshop

Visit Report by Dylan Stevens

Workshop : Open Labware: 3D printing your own lab equipment

Held at : Department of Anatomy and Physiology, University of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Tenure : May 17th - May 30th, 2015

Organisers :  Trend in Africa and Department of Anatomy and Physiology, University of Addis Ababa

Funded By : Volkswagen Stiftung, Germany

Participants :  Shanna Swart, Rajesh Sharma, Dylan Stevens

3D printing is a novel technique for the printing of objects in “Three Dimensional” form from digital file. The process consists of the addition of consecutive layers—from the lowest layer, building up on previous layers; all of which (hopefully) adhere to one another. Various materials are now available, which include Poly Lactic Acid (pLA), Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), polycarbonate (PS) etc, as well as more exotic polymers, such as copper impregnated PLA as well as resin, glass and even biological suspension.

In this workshop, we were exposed to three aspects of 3D printing and basic electronics: OpenSCAD for designing of 3D models, Arduino coding for the automoation of basic systerms, as well as the building of our 3D printer itself.

The workshop provided us with the opportunity to connect with experienced tutors from the University of Tubingen (Tom Baden, Andre Chagas, Samyra Cury, Florian Franzen and Jens Klinsing), Austin Quinn from UCSD,USA and Chris Forman from Cambridge, UK. Their vast experience in the field of 3D printing and building lab equipment using basic electronics was a great eye-opener. Collaborating with the other participants from all over Africa was very enlightening and we learnt a lot from each other’s mistakes during the workshop. Though we spent most of our time at the Medical Faculty of the University of Addis Ababa, there were two free days in which we got to travel.

All in all it was a very rewarding experience, getting to explore a vibrant culture in addition to developing skills that can be utilised in CeBER.