My team met with Lucia yesterday for our first weekly check-in. We clarified some of the basis of our experiment, and we asked helpful questions, like “how would our environment look?” We assigned roles, but this morning, Steven also suggested that each of us take a role in sequential phases of our project. I agree with Vrinda with her saying that Steven’s approach would be very helpful for writing our paper. I’m brainstorming the ways that we can use that method of teamwork in the other components of our project as well.

We started our deeper dive this morning. Alex seemed very happy to be teaching us about 3D printing, but he likes to say that he’s not an expert (and for us not to trust people who say they are). 3D printing is a whole new area for me, and I’m learning a lot about how it works. I was very straightforward about 3D printing as addressing my industrial design skills, when Alex asked us what we wanted to get out of our deeper dive. I’m sure that I’ll gain some technical knowledge, but I’m sure I’ll also learn a lot of how engineers like to design. That’ll be helpful when I work with engineers some day.

The second deeper dive session happened this afternoon. I understood most of the concepts, but a couple of them were over my head. In general, I understand how a 3D printer works now. I’m excited about all of the other paths that each of the people on 3D printing are choosing. We really get to choose what would best demonstrate our new skills in our specialty, and I think that is really cool. I’m interested in making a medical 3D print, with perhaps help from the 3D scanning group.

The biggest surprise that I got from 3D printing was the idea of 3D printing as “rapid prototyping.” That’s a wild concept for me. In Industrial Design, we make cardboard models, or foam models for rapid prototyping. The second we go into Solidworks, it’s no longer rapid (because it takes forever), according to the design timeline. I’m anxious to start sketching ideas for a medical product this weekend. I also want to get started on those t-shirt designs! I want to make a lot for the interns to choose from. 🙂