3D Printing course, any suggestions?

Monday morning I will be starting a one week long course on 3D printing for a group of a dozen HS age students from the East Bay (Oakland, Richmond, El Cerrito etc.)
I am in the process of setting up a website to complement the course with various web based resources for the students to access that will help them to make the most out of the experience. If you have any suggestions for resources please share them in this thread. Please feel free to comment on the outline as well. My intent is to let them get a taste of a number of different design options and then focus on working in which ever one suits their needs and style. I want them to understand how knowledge of the medium and equipment influences design, and to understand design as an iterative process. Some students will come in with an agenda like printing digital sculptures of their own creation, or creating 3D models and prints of actors in dramatic productions and others will need a bit more guidance. We are probably going to practice printing skills with a Seej set and consider how to modify the parts to make them work better using various design programs. Thanks in advance!

The outline for the course is below:

Introduction to 3D Printing Course Outline
Basic Goal: Students will be able to acquire and print digital models
Understand the 3D printing workflow.
Acquiring models:
• Download (Eg. Thingiverse, Yeggi, Shapeways, Cadgrab, Instructables)
• Draw (Tinkercad, Sketch up, 123D Design, MeshMixer, 123D Sculpt, 123D Creature)
• Download and modify. (Import to drawing programs)
• Scan (123D Catch, Makerbot Digitizer)
Generating G-Code (Slic3r)
• Printer Settings(Print Area, Center)
• Filament Settings (Extruder Temperature, Bed Temperature, Filament Size, Cooling.)
• Print Settings (Layer height, Perimeter Thickness, Infill, Skirt, Brim, Speed, Supports)
• Plater ( Positioning multiple objects, Rotating , Scaling, Exporting)
Controlling Printer (Pronterface/Printrun)
• Connect/Disconnect.
• Moving
• Homing
• Temperature Presets
• Extruder
• Loading files
• Starting Prints
• Pausing (Stopping) print
• Sending instructions
Mechanics
Printer Setup
• Alignment
• Calibration (Arduino and Flashing Firmware)
• Bed Level
• Endstop position/Bed height
• Print Bed Surface preparation
• Loading and changing filament.
• Filament diameter
Editing Gcode
• Changing settings without recompiling
• Troubleshooting
• Changing settings for different parts of the print or the end of the print.
Making changes on the fly
• Extruder Temperature
• Bed Temperature
• Fan settings
Trouble shooting your print.
• First Layer not sticking
• Second layer not sticking
• Warping and differential cooling
• Bridging
• Clogging
• Stepper motor skipping
• Flow rate problems
• RepRap Wiki Trouble Shooting guide.
Digital Design - General Principles and Properties of Materials .
Tutorial Links
• Tinkercad
• 123D design
• Sketch Up
• MeshMixer
• 123D Catch
• Makerbot Digitizer
• 123D creature
• 123D sculpt
Useful Accounts
• Thingiverse
• Tinkercad
• Instructables
• Autodesk
Resources:
• RepRap Wiki
• RepRap Forums
• Makerbot Curriculum
• NW Reprap
• Buildlog
• Ordbot forum.
• 3Ders
Sessions
• The Workflow
• Account Setup, Downloading and Printing.
• Tinkercad Tutorial
• Sketch up Tutorial
• 123D Design Tutorial
• Mesh Mixer Tutorial
• Digital Scanning
• Design and Printing time

Wow that is a huge amount to cover in a week. I see you cover the mechanics and coding, but not the electronics, or i just didn't see it. I'd like to know how it all works out. I have been asked to spend 3 days at my kids high school to cover 3d printing, after seeing your list, my heart rate is a little faster. I have been wondering what to cover with them, your list will be invaluable to me as I put together my plans.. so thank you .. and good luck.

I agree - I think you need to prune that list quite significantly if you don't wanna blow their brains out!

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Waitaki 3D Printer

The first day went quite well and the students exceeded my expectations. Most students were able to download STL files, generate G-code and print them on their own by the end of the day. I even had one who printed his own design. They got a lot farther with Tinkercad than I expected, and before too long I was learning from them! You know things are going well when students stick around after class to keep working on their prints and designs.

I am starting the first three days with a presentation for about 45 minutes before breaking out into groups for work sessions.
Day 1 was safety, web resources and intro to workflow, Day 2 will be understanding how the properties of materials and machines influence what you can do with your designs. Day 3 will be printer mechanics.
Tomorrow and Wednesday we do 3D scanning with the Makerbot Digitizer, Mesh mixer tutorials, design time and printing time.
Thursday and Friday we do 3D scanning with 123D catch, Sketch Up tutorials, design time and printing time.

It may seem like a lot, but you would be amazed what motivated, interested students can accomplish!

That is so awesome!!!!

Thanks! It really has been an incredible experience for both me and the students. More concentrated problem solving, peer teaching and iterative design than most students see in much of their educational careers. By the end of the week all I was doing was playing traffic cop on the printer queues. We met formally for six hours a day for five days, just so you have a sense of our timeline. but many students came in early and stayed after class to work on projects

Here are a few follow up thoughts for anyone who is planning a similar course. I am also attaching links to the powerpoints I created for anyone who wishes to use and modify as needed. When I was planning this course I found very few resources so I hope these will be a helpful reference.

My students varied a lot in their willingness to take risks and try their own creations.
I found it helpful to have a few simple design projects for the students who were stuck on the browse Thingiverse download it and print it mode.
That being said, there were a lot of students who did some very creative design work both from the artistic/graphic and mechanical design points of view.

It is really important to let them fail. It is OK to waste print time, the goal is to learn not to produce.

Don't worry about the printers crashing, they will. I had a massive nozzle clog that required complete nozzle disassembly (first time for me) and an idler bearing pulley break. I thought they were total nightmares at first, then I realized it was an opportunity for the students to see me doing some problem solving. We were up and running again in less than an hour and a half each time. Here is my design from Thingiverse for the in-situ pulley repair.

Encouraging students to go to each other for design and trouble shooting help first created a really positive learning environment.

Many students were intimidated by Meshmixer but I had a few that learned how to use the experimental generate supports feature who then went on to teach the rest of the class. Something i couldn't do because I hadn't had time to play with it. (I learned from the students too.) After that they were more willing to play with the rest of the program. The one thing that was a nuisance about Mesh Mixer is the horizontal plane is different, so you need to rotate before exporting the STL files. Otherwise the supports are not underneath!

I was surprised how little interest there was in 3D scanning. Most students tried it once and then moved on. I think I need to do a bit more direct instruction on how to use Meshmixer in general, and to do mashups in future.

Next time I think I will add a short talk on the basics of sketching mechanical designs on paper. Students have a tendency not to plan their design process very well and clearly needed some pointers in that area.

I started doing a wrap up/ share what you learned or printed later in the week and I wished that I had started it from the first day.

I would like to add a field trip out to a facility that does 3D metal printing or some other real world or experimental applications. Cellular printing?

I had 12 students and 2 printers which was probably not enough. I think that a 4-1 student to printer ratio is about right for this environment. On the other hand, it was better than 12-1 which is what I had originally planned!



Presentations:

Monday Presentation

Workflow Presentation

Tuesday Presentation

Thursday Presentation

I use purely openscad for designs - it is fast to learn and easy to edit.

Thanks for sharing this.

I do a 3D printing workshop where participants actually build a printer kit. Don;t generally have as much time to
go into the software side. I am currently actually putting together a 3D printer lab for the local high school so there are a lot of good
ideas in your slides for the teachers.

Like Ralph I highly recommend getting openscad into the mix. It is a great introduction to what I call parametric programming and
covers math, geometry, and programming skills.