Educators Guide to 3D Printing by @makerbot

Makerbot’s latest efforts in getting educators behind teaching 3d printing in the classroom is a new free downloadable PDF guide.

I downloaded it and gave the book a quick browse before sharing here. From what I see is actually pretty good content. It’s well structured and features some useful projects, lessons, pictures, etc. Although it’s pretty brand specific and pushes makerbot’s printers, slicing software and repo site, the content can easily be applicable to other things.

If you’re an educator looking for some inspiration, this is pretty good for teaching cad (both solid modeling + programmatic CAD), mechanical engineering, post-processing, design evaluation, and even casting!

I think the only topic missing (which is a big one) is electronics, no mention of arduino, raspberry pi or even just basic LED stuff, so educators will have to look for other sources like Sparkfun, Pimoronoi, and of course Adafruit (just to name a few) 🙂

This guidebook has everything you need to start 3D printing in your classroom, including;
A crash course in 3D printing and 3D design
9 classroom ready lesson plans
Tips, tricks, and best practice from 3D printing educators


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1 Comment

  1. I gave this PDF a quick read last week and it was a nice collection of many things that MakerBot has put out over the last few years including their finishing techniques and mold making techniques. I would love to see more schools take their 3d printing to that level so students can really start to learn about making good looking prototypes and start to understand micro manufacturing. The lessons are neat that they use a different free CAD solution for each. But any updates to the interfaces can make that content stale within a year or 2. Hopefully they keep updating the guide.

    I also picked up the new physical book, The 3D Printing Handbook: Technologies, design and applications, which I hope gives a more in depth view of material use along with strength and weakness across FDM, SLA and SLS. It should be arriving sometime this weekend.

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