Everest Leo
3D Modeling and Printing
31 March 2023
Day 10: Time to Reflect (Everest)
It's the end of the final day and I have a lot of thoughts about this M-term. First, I'll say what I did today, which is not really much because I just finalized my design for the zoetrope, but I won't be able to print it because other people had priority on the printer and now there's not enough time left. It doesn't bother me that much however because the likelihood of such a complicated print working first try is very low so I would have to remodel or redesign and then for sure we would be out of time.
The main point is that I learned how to use the 3D modeling software, Fusion 360, which could be a skill that I implement into my future work or personal life. The idea behind 3D printing is very interesting and can open up doors to a lot of different products and unique applications, so I would definitely not mind working with this type of machinery again. During this M-term I've even thought of getting my own 3D printer because I now have the skillset to use a 3D printer on my own, so maybe I'll pursue that in the future.
As for the M-term itself, I'll split it up into three categories. 1) What went well. 2) What didn't go so well. 3) How it could be better.
1) It was a lot better than I expected in the technical and social aspects. For the technical aspects, I assumed that modeling 3D figures would be a lot harder than it is, but it only took us one day to start printing, so we were able to actually print a good amount of stuff in the beginning. As for the social aspect I was expecting it to be miserable for me because I was the only junior and had no friends in the M-term, but it ended up being ok. I made some new friends and by the second week, we were talking a lot and playing volleyball during the breaks, which made it a lot more enjoyable and I am happy that my assumption was wrong.
2) Because the school day is 7 hours and breaks + lunch counts for around 80 minutes we still have 5 hours and 40 minutes of modeling and printing which over 10 days is a lot and it gets hard to focus at the end, plus my eyes and head just start to hurt. Another thing is the printing. We only have two printers, but we have 8 people with multiple-hour-long prints, so, inevitably, some people are not going to be able to print, but those are just the constraints we face with the equipment we have, so I can't really complain.
3) I think maybe some more structure would be good for this course, especially because it is an intro course. The video tutorials were nice, but then once we graduated to a little bit more independent modeling it would've been nice to have a relatively specific theme that we had to stay within so it was still independent but a little more focused so we weren't spending too much time trying to find something to print. Once we were finished with that, then we could have found something on our own to design and print.
Overall I think the M-term accomplished what it was supposed to and a little bit more. There were some challenges for sure, but they didn't take away from the whole learning experience.
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