Senior Design Project Proposal

The CLT strives to offer a variety of robust and useful technology tools for faculty, students, and staff. At this time our tools are limited to classroom and lab technologies that are geared towards multimedia and software applications. While software and multimedia make up the majority of our educational technology tools we are interested in the growing convergence of technology and physical world. Through the encouragement of O'Reilly Media and the New Media Consortium we see a growing trend in educational technologies for data visualization, mobile computing, and maker oriented technologies. All of these are being driven in an open and collaborative environment largely resembling the tools and communities that developed the GNU/Linux community and its derivatives.

It is in this vein that we see communities developing the resources and tools to make available manufacturing applications that until recently were all but unattainable for the hobbyist/educator. It is because and through these tools that we wish to engage this convergence with the help of the Senior Design Project.

It is our hope that the work that others have done will not detract from the project at hand but will allow creativity and advancement without getting bogged down in the areas unrelated to the goals of this project. In the original project proposal we submitted an idea for a low cost and expandable 3D extruding printer. In our request we suggested sources of input such as Makerbot and RepRap. The initial feedback that we received was positive and offered several concerns and interests that we would like to address.

Q: Would the project be too complicated?

This is a reasonable objection that might only be answerable through the process itself. ...

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...stic as possible.

At this time the CLT would not likely be able to provide any additional financial support so we understand that the cost may be too high to provide for the needed flexibility in material design and testing. It is our hope that this is not the case.

Considerations for Design:

The biggest design challenge that we can think of is increasing the printable area currently offered by the standard kit. While we can certainly work within it's current limitations it is almost always an added benefit to go larger. The second consideration is for the end user. As stated above our goal is to make such a tool available to anyone. This means making it user friendly and robust enough that we can think about the product and not the process.

Thank you for your consideration. If we can provide any additional information or support please let me know. Thanks.