Over the past few seasons, The Green Machine’s use of 3D printing has flourished. It began in 2010 when Stratasys Ltd. began sponsoring our team. Stratasys is an Eden Prairie based company that builds 3D printers and runs a 3D printing factory called Red Eye On-Demand. For those not familiar with 3D printing, 3D printing is the process of depositing layer upon layer of plastic on a surface in order to manufacture just about anything that can be made out of plastic. 3D printers use computer aided design (CAD) files in order to create customized parts directly from CAD. During the 2012 season, we used 3D printed parts primarily for presentation purposes by printing a scale model of our robot that year.
The next year, we had Stratasys print (3) plastic augers to move and store Ultimate Ascent’s Frisbees. In addition, we printed another scale model as a competition show piece. This year, our team has used 3D printing extensively by printing anchors for the elastic tubing that powers our catapult, custom mounting brackets for our pneumatic pistons, and a holder for our robot’s wireless bridge. 3D printing has become increasingly invaluable in our team’s design process throughout all three of these years. The 3D printed parts that Stratasys has manufactured for us have been most useful as custom parts. Unlike traditional manufacturing methods, there are no standard parts that have to be used or fasteners that are required. Instead parts are printed in any size needed with everything fused together by melted plastic. In addition, Stratasys’ 3D printing is remarkably fast compared to ordering machined parts from other companies. The average turn-around time for our 3D printed parts is around three days. I personally have had the pleasure of working with Stratasys over the past two years as The Green Machine’s 3D printing coordinator. After seeing what potential 3D printing has as a system of manufacturing, I highly recommend that anyone at any level of engineering take advantage of it.