Extrusionbot first impressions

We just got back from Spring break but just before we left the Extrusionbot unveiling took place.  To put it simply...Fantastic!  The students were all over the machine and following a few initial questions and issues (mainly due to the fact that we had 6 kids working together...) we had our first filament extruding.  Set up was simple and straightforward and the machine itself is very solid, well thought out and incredibly well made.

There was a small crowd visiting us for the unboxing including our own Principal, a Principal from another school, our curriculum director for the school district and even our Superintendent of Schools!  We also had our representative from the Southern Oregon Educational Services District and quite a few teachers from our school.  As you can imagine, everybody wanted to get their hands on the machine and help with the set-up.

We followed the instructions that came with the machine and within an hour or so we were printing filament!  We started with clear PLA and neon orange pellets at approximately a 2 to 1 ratio of PLA to colorant.  The folks at Extrusionbot sent us a bewildering array of raw materials to work with and we have a couple of students working on building extra spools to carry all of the new filaments we will be creating.

After a couple of errors on our part the filament was coming out perfectly.  We checked the diameter and it is coming out at a consistent 1.8mm which is what we expected to see.  This diameter matches what we have purchased in the past so it should work well with all of our machines.  We are going to start printing with the new filament this week and we will begin to record how it performs under differing conditions. 

Once again, a huge THANK YOU goes out to the folks at Extrusionbot for the exceptionally generous donation.  Our students are sooooo excited about the prospect of creating their own filaments and trying out different mixes.  The more they can make for themselves as opposed to buying material, the more they will learn.

We look forward to meeting the people at Extrusionbot during the OACTE conference next week in Sunriver, Oregon.  We plan on really showing the machine off to everybody there!