When it comes to 3D printing within the classroom environment, there are some teachers who welcome it with open arms, while there are others who are deathly afraid of the technology. Some teachers have taken it upon themselves to learn how to use various 3D printers, while others have come up with some very unique lesson plans built around these new machines. However, one high school teacher in Union, Missouri is taking 3D printing to an entirely new level.
Dustin Klenke is a physics, robotics, and biology teacher at Union High School, and as part of an NSTA (National Science Teachers Association) conference that he recently attended, he learned a great deal about building his very own microstereolithographic (micro SLA) 3D printer. The presentation, which was given by a man named Joe Muskin, is part of a project run through the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It showed those in attendance the ins and outs of how to build their very own 3D printer, a printer that is based on the same concepts we see in today’s desktop DLP-based SLA printers, but which operates in its own unique way.
