Category: 7th Grade Technology

3D printing has changed the way things are manufactured.

I looked around my house to find things that thought may have been 3D printed. 3D printing is when you digitally make something and then you send it to the printer. The printer then makes the object by making it layer by layer. (This can be seen in the picture above.) The printer melts down filament which is a spool of  material which is commonly plastic. It then takes the melted filament, puts it in print head which distributes the filament onto the print plate. 3D printers can be used to make food, art body parts, toys, or even houses. I think that my garbage bin, some folders and my Invisalign are all 3D printed. Below is a picture of a filament spool

One of the things that 3D printing effects is the environment. 3D printing can be  very sustainable.  It can be sustainable because the filament can be melted down and turned into new filament. This way, when people are done with objects or if it is waste, they can reuse it to make the filament something new and the cycle can continue. This way, we can recycle things instead of letting it become landfill or pollution, it can be something new and great. 3D printers sometimes use renewable bioplastic.

3D printing is also getting into the art world. It gives artist many new opportunities. They can either make sculptures or pottery or even food art without having to be good with their hands. Some people are very creative, but they aren’t good at the actual “making” part of art. This gives these people new ways to become artists.  Below is a picture of a really cool piece of 3D printed art.

As you can tell, 3D printing has many benefits.

Through the help from four videos about timber harvest, I was able to learn a lot about how timber was harvested in the past and about how it is harvested now. Before watching these videos, I was curious about how enormous trees were cut down before they had machines to do it. I wondered this because it didn’t seem reasonable to cut down the tree at once because it may fall on someone or something if it is very large. I learned from the first two videos about harvesting in the early 1900s, that what they do is they have someone climb to the top of the tree and cut the top off. They call that person a topper. This way the big trees don’t come down at once. Then when they do that  a group of people cut down the bottom of the tree. I never realized  before watching the first two videos that a whole team is needed for this job.

On the far left is a photo of people cutting down the bottom of a tree in the early 1900s. In the center of the post is a photo of a topper cutting the top of the tree off.

Another thing I found interesting about timber harvesting was the way it changed over time. During the 1900’s most of the process was done manually, but now most of it is done by technology. One example is that what I described earlier was how they typically brought a tree down in the earlier 1900s. Now they don’t use toppers or a group of people at the bottom of the tree. Instead they use cranes driven by  people. They are shown in the picture on the left.

 

Another way that it changed was the way that they transported the wood. In the earlier 1900s they had to build trains and tracks in order to transport it. Now they just use trucks. This makes it much easier to transport the timber.

 

I think building something means that you are taking an idea or creation that you thought of and you make it a reality. In other words, I think when you build something you’re taking and making it something real that you can use. I think that something built can look a million different ways.  One thing that I built was a flashlight last year in technology.  During parts of the building process, I was confused because I had never built something like that before it was also pretty challenging. Because of this, at the end of the process I was really proud of myself. The flashlight is still in my room today, but I don’t think I have used it because I haven’t needed a flashlight. I probably will use it at some point when I need one. Here is a photo of it:

I personally love to build and create things. My favorite parts of building something is  being able to decorate it at the end and being able to see what I can accomplish at the end. Building and creating things are very different from my regular hobbies. Doing things like building allow me to physically create something by myself, which I don’t usually do.