As from one October I'm working partime as a research collaborator at the University College of Ghent. I'm working on a project called EHBO2, which stands for "Eigen Hart en Bloedvaten Onderzoek & Ontwikkeling", translated: Own Heart and Blood vessels Research and Development. The target audience of this project are young people, one of the aims is to draw their attention to the importance of sports, healthy food, being a non smoker and stuff like that.
Another aim of the project is making aware the different processes of research and development. The cycle Designing, Virtual Testing, Redesigning, Prototyping, Testing and Redesigning is demonstrated. The step Prototyping is where the RepRap comes in.
At the University College of Ghent we do have industrial quality printing at the CTO - Rapid Prototyping & Tooling. But as these techniques are rather expensive they are not suited for use in our workshops. (Also these big machines are not very mobile...) In these workshops we show them the abilities of prototyping with 3D printers like the RepRap. Practically we have one RapMan (currently mine), and ordered a second. Since Friday(16 October 09) we also have a Makerbot but this bot has yet to be assembled. These bots are put into action at the workshops.
Last Thursday I had my first EHBO2 workshop. Some pictures & info:
First we do a dissection on the heart of a pig. Students can do their own dissection in groups.
Second we do a simulation of the blood circulation in our body using water and pumps.
And finaly we printed a keychain for each participant. 32! EHBO2 keychains!
(Luckily skeinforge has a function called 'multiply' :-)
I'm exited about how this is project going to evolve! Stay tuned!
