SPAM did its first speaking event this last Tuesday!

The Covington Community was welcomed to UCI on a beautiful spring afternoon April 12th. The suns warmth beamed into the concrete as I lead them to the 3rd floor of the CAC building for our presentation and demonstration of 3D printing. After everyone was seated in the quiet presentation room Jesse spoke to the residents about the history and utility of 3D printing and other types of alternative manufacturing. The residents were very attentive asking many questions regarding the possibilities and limits of the technology as it stands today. Once Jesse was done answering questions I took the podium to begin my live demo of the technology.

For this demo we decided to bring along our Airwolf Axiom printer. The Axiom being one of the most advanced printers we have in our lab, it lends itself greatly to demonstrations such as this. My process began with a brief overview of how something is printed:

Model an object
Convert the object to G-Code
Send the model to the printer
Print It
We began with the modeling. I asked a member of the audience for their initials (in this case NB). I modeled the initials in Rhino and exported them to our printer software, Cura. After positioning the model correctly and sending the file to the printer I began the print. The audience was able to see the entire process unfold on the big screen as well, since we had set up Jesse’s HDR to have a live feed to the projector. Well, the audience was able to see most of the process, unfortunately the camera died midway through. I forgot that constantly having the camera on and ready drains the batter so fast ( oh well next time we’ll bring spares).

After our live demo I answered more questions on the process including what kinds of plastic were used, how the G-Code works and many more.Then the presentation was over.I and Phil, a staff member from the Covington, lead the group back down from the room, into the warm air of the evening and onto their bus. All in all everyone was immensely pleased with the presentation and wish to come back soon to discover even more about the awesome work being done at UCI.

Thanks for reading!