1st Prize: VaxBeads by John Van Tuyl
3D Printers for Peace Contest Results. Via boingboing:
The results of the Michigan Tech 3-D Printers for Peace Contest are in:
1st Prize, an open-source Series 1 3-D printer, provided by Type A Machines went to John Van Tuyl from Hamilton, On who designed VaxBeads, which are 3-D printed immunization records. VaxBeads offer the potential to ease the determination of what vaccines a child needs in the developing world. Each bead represents a different vaccine. The shape and colour of each bead is unique to a specific vaccine.
This innovative idea showcased the ability of 3-D printing as each bead is customized on the spot with the child’s initials, date of birth, and an identifying number. It is the designer’s hopes that the beads would have more intrinsic value to the patients than standard vaccination cards.
2nd prize (Michigan Tech’s MOST version of the RepRap Prusa Mendel open-source 3D printer kit) went to Michigan Tech student, Matt Courchaine, for his Solar Powered Water Purification Cone. In disaster areas or among the millions of people that do not have improved water supplies clean water is a precious commodity. This printable design allows users to make clean water from contaminated supplies. The white, semi transparent plastic cover of the solar cone allows sunlight to pass through it and evaporate dirty water contained in the black base tray. Clean water then condenses on the cooler white plastic of the cone and drips into a holding reservoir, which is part of the cone for later drinking.
3rd prize, MatterHackers sampler pack of filament, was awarded to Aaron Meidinger for the design of a Braille Tablet, which is a tool for a sighted person to help a blind person to learn braille or just a quick way to leave a note for a friend. One prints out a braille platform and a scrabble set of letters, along with some of the punctuation and a nice pile of the blank tiles to use it to write any short message.
All the open source entries to the contest demonstrated the technical ability and promise of low-cost 3-D printers to provide for humanities needs and advance the cause of peace…..
2nd Prize: Solar Powered Water Purification Cone by Matt Courchaine
3rd Prize: Braille Tablet by Aaron Meidinger
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!