Last December, Ellie and I were in Dallas for Y Soft North America’s Christmas party as well as some business meetings over the few days we were there. We live in the Orange County, CA area and Ellie was on school break. I knew she’d like the activities planned for the party and enjoy meeting my co-workers, so she came with me.
As any parent knows, keeping a 10-year old occupied while working can be challenging (unless you are okay with them playing video games all day long, which I am not!) It didn’t take her long to spot our 3D printers and she wanted to try it out. We have a few
YSoft be3D eDee printers that anyone in the office can use so I got her set up on a laptop.
1-2-3 print!
I walked her through some easy steps: 1) Download a model; 2) Open it using
DeeControl, our layering software and click the button to send it to the printer; 3) at the printer, choose the file from my print queue and print.
Once I showed her those three steps, she was off to the races. Her first 3D print was a snowflake, perfect as a Christmas tree ornament. I have to say that she amazed us all by being able to do it on her own after one short walkthrough. She is a bright girl, no doubt. But it is testament on how easy the entire 3D printing solution is – our claim of easy-to-use is so true.
Her excitement with learning 3D printing has turned her into a huge fan. In fact, next month Y Soft will be at the
STEAM Expo in the Los Angeles area, and she’s excited to be there with me to show other kids just how easy and fun 3D printing is. Though, once you see how easy it is, any school-aged child can use it. The amazing thing is, we have seen how excited kids around the world get when printing 3D models. The teachers get pretty excited too.
Time Flew By
The entire 3D printer easily sits on a desk. Unlike many low-cost 3D printers, it is enclosed so kids are not exposed to fast moving parts and the high temperatures needed to melt the filament used to create the model. I had no worries about sitting in a meeting while she was out there printing. In fact, the 3D printer door locks so there is no way she could access any parts or high temperatures as it won’t open until it is safe to do so. For her, the time flew by and she was pretty bummed to have to leave “her” 3D printer behind.
These are some of the models she printed. We also showed her
be3D Academy, which is our online collection of 3D lesson plans. It includes a database of models tested and optimized for eDee so she could have printed so many models to tinker with.
I’m excited to tell all the schools in my region about our 3D printing solution. (I need to bring Ellie on all my sales calls!)
