Day 3

Today, the first thing we did when we got to class was to admire the small Yoda/Buddha hybrid statue that had been printing overnight. It was the first time we had experimented with printing an object using more than one color.

After, we got to work. Much of what was left to be done in terms of building had to do with wiring and dealing with other physical electronics. For such complicated machines as the ones we were building, there were bound to be huge amounts of wires. This quickly created an incredibly messy and cluttered space, both physically and visually.

The group building the Delta printer got the farthest of any of the groups. By the end of the day, they had completely built the printer, and were working out the kinks in the motion of the printer. While they weren't quite able to get to the stage where objects could be printed, they did reach a stage in which they could move around the "spider".

The other two groups, who were building the Reprap printers, were able to finish building their printers, but ran into problems trying to get them to move. One group was able to get their printer's "arm" to move in one direction, but not the other, while the other group wasn't able to get their printer's arm to move at all. By the end of the day, the problem was still not solved, even after fiddling with both the hardware of the printer and the software used to control it.

During all of that, the Cube printer, which we had bought already built before the A-Term, whirred in the background. Much of what was printed at the end of the day were flat objects with words on them, such as logos.