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.
