A team of University of Richmond students presented their 'Rapman 3.2' 3-D printer Friday at the School of Arts and Sciences Student Symposium in the Modlin Center.
A 3-D printer is a machine that downloads a 3-D design from a program. Sandeep Dinesh, Steven Daniel and William Barksdale (pictured above from left), the three-man team that built the 'Rapman,' used Google Sketch-up to design a miniature spaceship.
The printer heats a type of plastic--the same type Legos are made of--to nearly 250 degrees inside its printing nozzle. The machine has two levels, a base with a controller device and a platform for printing, separated by four vertical metal poles.
The top level slides down the vertical poles as the nozzle starts building the shape of the plastic spaceship. After a few minutes, the three legs of the ship start to take form as the nozzle carefully jerks around the platform, placing small amounts of melted plastic.
"It's like icing a cake," Dinesh, a computer science major, said. "Actually, you could ice a cake with this!"
Approximately an hour later, the 'Rapman' finished the ship. It was the second test of the machine for Barksdale, Daniel and Dinesh, whose club, UR SERVANTS (Students Establishing Reasonable and Visionary Attitudes Necessary for Technological Societies), secured funding for the $1,300 device through the Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research Committee.
Three-dimensional printing is already being used for much more than toy spaceships, Daniel said. Current uses of the technology include rapid creation of prototypes, highly specific parts for complicated machines, such as airplanes and even a human kidney.
For college students, Barksdale said, the technology would create "personalized objects, like an iPhone case or shot glasses."
Daniel will be doing research with the printer over the summer, and the team members hope to eventually be able to create personalized Richmond products.
UR SERVANTS was founded by Daniel and focuses on how technological innovation impacts humanity.
Anyone interested in 3-D printing or joining UR SERVANTS can visit a 3-D printer open house in Boatwright Memorial Library at 2 p.m. April 20.
Contact staff writer John McAuliff at john.mcAuliff@richmond.edu
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