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The majority of schools and school boards who contact TriMech are new to 3D printing technology and are looking for our experience to help them get started. Our guidance, industry experience, and technical support is something you cannot get from a big box outlet or by simply ordering a 3D printer over the web. It’s easy to get a quote from these sources but you likely will not receive the advice you may need to make a successful decision.

Using an Artec Eva 3D scanner and the large-format Stratasys F900 3D printer, the team at Camosun Innovates is creating replica whale bones to fill in missing pieces of massive displays in museums across the world.

In a time of remote learning and physical distancing, Camosun College in Victoria, British Columbia used its in-house technology and expertise to keep students engaged and learning.

Now that 3D scanners are much more common and accessible to different technical and non-technical fields and practices, it is a fantastic time for universities to get their hands on a scanner for research and education. More engineers in the field are using 3D scanners to create micron-accurate meshes of real objects as a baseline for new CAD designs, and more engineers are expected to have some experience with a scanner. There are other professionals using 3D scanning to their advantage as well, such as architects and designers. With so many uses and scanner options available, you may need a little help to narrow down your list so that you can find the right fit for your research and educational program needs.

One of the last steps you may have in proving yourself for your chosen industry is to implement your knowledge, teamwork and design skills on a multi-semester final project. Your results will be presented in front of other engineers, potential sponsors, and a possible connection that could propel you in the job market. These final projects are important, especially how your design process will parallel workflows that practicing engineers, designers and manufacturers go through. Honing in on a design, accumulating research and creating the best solution to a problem is something these design firms go through every day.

The 3D printing space is chock full of different OEM’s boasting features and benefits that make them appear better, faster, or less expensive. Meanwhile; Stratasys is putting their money where their mouth is by constantly developing new materials to push the limits of additive manufacturing. Vero UltraBlack™ Black and Vero UltraWhite™ have opened a new avenue of 3D printing by allowing users to achieve rich and full true colors at a mind-boggling thickness. Additionally, they have increased their achievable color gamut to over 560,000 different colors, giving users more design possibilities allowing them to create without compromise on the PolyJet J8-Series and J55 Printers.

3D printing in color has been around longer than you think. Do you need a prototype printed in yellow ABS? No problem, load a yellow spool of filament in your 3D printer and voilà! You have yourself a yellow part. How about blue? We have you covered, just toss some blue photopolymer in your SLA vat and BAM! A blue part can be printed. How about a part with multiple colors? No problem. Break out the trusty sandpaper and good old-fashion elbow grease, maybe some primer, then either spray or hand paint your model until your heart is content.

Oh… you were hoping to have full color printed parts straight off the printer? Why didn’t you say so? Let me introduce you to Stratasys PolyJet technology.

One of the most exciting aspects of 3D printing in full color is the ability to take a 3D scan and a copy of the model in full color! Using the Artec Space Spider 3D scanner and the Stratasys J55 full color PolyJet 3D printer, this task can be accomplished easily in under a day. This efficiency empowers you and your team to make prototypes and replicas of just about anything quicker than ever before, and faster than many people realize. In this blog post, I will be summarizing the work we did to clone a regular household banana, from a 3D scan to a full color 3D print. 

Technology continues to develop at an ever-faster pace and educators have long realized that the best way for students to keep up, is to gain hands-on experience. 3D printing is no exception, and many schools and universities are integrating 3D printers into their curriculums. These tools give students capabilities that could only have been imagined years ago, while building skills that apply to real-world applications. The challenge for educators is sorting through the wealth of options that exist, to narrow down the best choice for their students. In this article, we will explain some of the benefits of key 3D printing technologies and the departments that could take advantage of each one.