By Rick Lindfors
Galen Ettlin Reports
Forget about traditional printing, the University of Oregon’s science library has a new tinker toy that brings a whole new dimension to what you print.
In the basement of Onyx Hall, have access to the biggest collection of scientific resources. And as of September, there’s a new 3D printer in the family. This printer melts plastic like a hot glue gun and layers the plastic into three dimensional objects. Students and faculty who design 3D concepts on the computer can email their designs or bring a flash drive to submit a print job. This way, the printer bridges the gap between virtual images and reality allowing once intangible objects to be printed into something you can hold.
One grad student used the printer to replicate a piece of the earth’s crust, something science librarian Dean Walton is excited about.
“The slab itself is big,” Walton says. “It’s 600 kilometers long, 300 kilometers wide and 100 kilometers thick and 60 kilometers underground. That’s something we will never ever see yet we can use computers and analysis such as seismic waves to image it, create a model of it and print it. That is just, to me, it’s mind blowing.”
The printer may have cost the university $2,400, but printing in 3D is more economical than you might think. An ink cartridge can set you back as much as $90 to $100 while a large spool of 3D printing plastic costs about $40. After printing every day for two months, the science library only used one spool.
And Walton says as long as an idea is original and research oriented, anyone can use the printer.
“Our view is that we’re a library; we’re here for the general university community. So our goal was to actually have a 3D printer that anyone with UO status can use,” he says.
If you have an idea for a print job or just want to see how the printer works, you can stop by the front desk of the science library.
Science faculty are currently using the printer to replicate fossils since the printed models are much more durable and replaceable.