3D Printing and DREAMS Lab at Virginia Tech

It is no big secret that many of America’s colleges and universities are becoming increasingly interested in 3D printing education by including new classes in this field of expertise into their engineering programs, but Virginia Tech is honored for being one of the world’s leaders in this area.  In the spring of 2012, VT opened the doors to their very impressive DREAMS Lab, the very first of its kind ever constructed.

Within the doors of this state-of-the-art classroom was a rather impressive 3D printing station designed through the partnership of Dr. Chris Williams of VT and one of the college’s most gifted students, Ms. Amy Elliot.  They named it “DreamVendor”, and it was made instantly available for 3D printing opportunities to selected Virginia Tech students as a method of fabricating prototypes for some of their own original designs and academic projects.

Williams and Elliot wanted to make 3D printing education not only fun and interesting but as easy to use as possible.  The DreamVendor is so easy, in fact, that all that a student has to do is walk up to the machine, load their file, and push the “print” button.  It’s almost as easy to use as a standard Xerox copier.  Next came the DreamVendor 2 in the autumn of 2013, and soon every reputable university around the world was including 3D printing opportunities of some kind on their campuses.  

3D Printing opportunities: How it might change our lives!

 

As you know 3D printing is immigrating in the conventional market, many major companies are getting eager to get in. But now the question everyone asking is how to integrate or associate 3d printing to the existing businesses, or what are the 3d printing opportunities will we have to start a new venture? Let me tell you 3d printing opportunities are vast but we are going to need a whole lot more ingenious creative projects for example creative ways to reuse or recycle and that might reduce our dependent on plastic related products for 3D printers. Well let me give you the good news, that accompaniment nature of fabrication or production offers us with more flexibility in what we can produce and how we can do it.

As I was saying the 3d printing opportunities are absolutely there, all we need is some great, innovative ideas. I gave you a good news now time for a bad news 3D printers aren't precisely plug & play yet, but we are very very close though. But wait! What are you going to print? Assume you are an furniture designer, you can print your designs or ideas and have fun with it. The good thing is most of the consumers tend to absorb instead of creating and this is where one of the most alluring 3d printing opportunities prevails.

Do you remember those music cassettes/tapes? As we all know music is now predominantly available in digital format rather than music cds or other hard format. Maybe it is not difficult to expect online stores selling smartphone covers in digital file format that can be downloaded and printed in your 3d printer at home, will it not be magical like Captain Kirk's Replicator? This is not it, 3d printing opportunities are huge space technology giants like NASA is testing 3d printed components for rocket engine.


Interestingly that might lead to the creating of a whole new breed of professionals who would design digital products to be printed at your home. That is not it, the 3d printing opportunities are not only limited to the above mentioned fields but it might soon create a havoc in the medical industry as according to the researcher it might soon be possible to create controversial human organs using 3d printing technologies! Even though this technology still in it's basic stage but the 3d printing opportunities are huge and might lead to a new era of modern technology and soon we will see a new type of digital download through out the world wide web and maybe someday these man made organs will save our lives or make our live better.