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Showing posts from August, 2017

Building a 3D Printer, Burying Your Father-in-law, and Other Ways to Spend the Summer

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This summer has been pretty nuts. Work In June, our department encouraged participants to pitch an idea in 5 minutes that could be funded with $3,000.  I suggested that we buy a 3D printer and won.  This meant that I got to buy a 3D printer for our department and establish guidelines for its use.  It also kicked off my boss' long-held interest in 3D bio printing.  Regular 3D printing binds plastic into complex shapes in order to make 3D objects out of plastic.  Bioprinting is a very experimental process in which cells are arranged in 3D instead of bits of plastic in order to create 3D objects made of of cells.  So we bought a kit and now I'm building a 3D bioprinter in addition to the regular 3D printer that I'm having a lot of fun with. On the right is our department's first printer.  On the left is our lab's new experimental bioprinter. Recreation I've been working (so... so... slooowwly) on my underwater robot.  It's been one 'learni