3D printing is one of my favorite new technologies that libraries are adopting. When I purchased the library collection for my building, I took a risk and ordered four 3D printers to “tinker” with. I figured with a large budget for an opening collection, this would be the only time I would have the opportunity!

While I feel proficient in downloading files from Thingiverse, running them through the slicing software, and running a 3D print, designing STL files is a totally different ball game! Spatial thinking is not my strong suit, and I really struggled with navigating through the steps of how to create an item from scratch in TinkerCad. Here is my effort:

Each time I attempted to push the file into an STL, it wouldn’t combine my name and the heart together as one image. 

While I wasn’t successful with designing my own item in Tinkercad, I did run a 3D print on the Snapmaker 2.0 A350  printer that I have in my library’s makerspace. Articulated animals have been a popular choice of print in our building. It took a few attempts to get the initial layer to lay down correctly without warping or pulling away from the print bed, but after 12 hours of printing, I had success!

Ackerman, A. 2022. [Image of 3D printed slug with gold filament.]