3D Printing

The school's YouTube channel just uploaded a video, at Link 3D Printing at Hamilton Central - YouTube

Thanks to a gift from the Emerald Foundation, 3D printing is now a reality. Please check out this short video (sorry no sound), to see what we have printed so far and to see the assembly of a mechanical hand that can be used with children that may be missing some or all of one of there hands.

For those who haven't been following the 3D printing developments, here from two years ago is Dad Uses 3D Printer To Make His Son A Prosthetic Hand (VIDEO)

Leon McCarthy was born without fingers on his left hand, but with some help from his dad, he can now draw, pick up food and hold a water bottle using a homemade prosthetic.
CBS Evening News reports that instead of paying tens of thousands of dollars for a factory-made prosthetic hand, the 12-year-old's father, Paul McCarthy, printed one.
The Massachusetts dad had spent two years searching for affordable ways to give his son a prosthetic. Finally, he found inspiration on the Internet. He told Fox that he found a YouTube video detailing the work of Ivan Owen, who used a 3D printer to create a prosthetic hand for a 5-year-old in 2011. Following in Owen's footsteps, McCarthy used a 3D printer purchased for his son's school and began working on the hand with his son.
Earlier this summer, NPR reported that McCarthy used online directions from Owen to put the prosthetic hand together and -- with a little trial and error -- created a hand that Leon was able to try.

It's not just humans: 9 Animals Whose Lives Improved Thanks to 3D Printing

the fifth-grade students of May Howard Elementary School in Savannah, Ga., went well beyond your average class work when they designed and built a 3D-printed prosthetic for an injured box turtle appropriately named Stumpy.

(That slide show ends with a 3D printed replacement beak for an injured eagle.) And of course it's not just prosthetics. 3D Printing: Are You Ready for the New Decentralized Industrial Revolution? | WIRED

In the field of medicine, 3D printing of complex living tissues, commonly known as bioprinting, is opening up new avenues for regenerative medicine. ... This cutting edge technology in conjunction with stem cell research is likely to revolutionize the made-to-order organs, cutting across the transplant waiting lists.
The Aerospace industry, an early adopter of this technology, is already designing small to large 3D printed parts saving time, material and costs.
The Automobile world is already witnessing crowd-sourced, open-source 3D printed vehicles driving off of the showroom floors...

And yesterday's news included Scientists develop superfast 3D printed octopus submarine | 3D Printer News & 3D Printing News... And so on, and on and on.

So, is this a good thing to be doing in school? I think so. Will it improve test scores? Um... probably not, which for me is one more reason for not over-emphasizing test scores. Will it measurably help students get Ready For Jobs? (I.e., has the prospective unemployment rate among HCS graduates ten years hence been measurably lowered?) Some will say yes, but I think probably not. Why, then, is it a good thing to be doing in school?
That's not an easy question...but I think that I think that school, to a significant extent, ought to be about feeding dreams. So personally I approve. Yay!