Carleton’s recently unveiled Discovery Centre is now home to a new kind of printer.
“My mom’s dog’s name is Rascal,” a student said, showing off a bone-shaped cookie cutter with “RASCAL” imprinted on it.
It was made with a 3D printer, and the person behind it is master’s in interdisciplinary design student Anthony Dewar.
Nov. 20 was GIS day, or geographic information system day, and Dewar was presenting two 3D printers to over 20 students at the new Discovery Centre located on the fourth floor of Carleton’s library.
The printer fills a little corner in the small square transparent room.
It heats up plastic and squishes it out in layers of 0.1-millimetre, layering it according to the given electronic design, Dewar said.
The printers will stay in the Discovery Centre, and any Carleton student interested in learning how to design 3D-printable objects can show up at sessions held every week or two, Dewar said.
The centre’s director Alan Steele said the cost of printing has not been decided yet.
“I think it could be very useful to complement student work in different ways,” Steele said.
For example, biology students at Carleton already are using a printer in their department to print out skulls and bones, Steele said.
“The design is mostly limited by creativity,” Dewar said.
Other limitations include patented goods and “offensive” things, Steele said.
The printer’s ink-equivalent material is made from renewable resources such as corn starch and tapioca roots, Dewar said.
He said this technology can help create things such as missing bicycle pedal caps.
