New 3D Printers Improve Efficiency, Quality for Blue Mountain Projects

Some of the most popular projects in Blue Mountain Middle School’s Art & Design program each school year utilize 3D printing. For Hendrick Hudson students, those projects will now be produced with greater speed and overall efficiency thanks to four new 3D printers that were purchased this month.

“The manufacturers have ironed out a lot of bugs and issues,” said Paul Gioacchini, who co-teaches the course with Logan Krause. “It’s really crazy how much more efficient these printers are.”

The new printers were purchased thanks to a generous grant from the Hendrick Hudson Community Educational Foundation, a community-based, non-profit organization that raises and grants funds in support of educational activities that benefit all five schools within the district.

The previous 3D printers had begun to fail, limiting the amount of material they could print. But increased efficiency is the primary benefit. Mr. Gioacchini and Mrs. Krause said a printing job that previously took four or five hours will now print in just 45 minutes.

“3D printing has come a long way in a very short amount of time,” Mrs. Krause said.

The teachers also lauded the quality of print projects created by the new 3D printers. The machines use far less filament but produce smoother, more accurate printouts. As part of a sound project, students were recently tasked with creating either a cell phone amplifier or simple musical instrument and the results were impressive.

“We will use way less energy with these machines and it will be much more efficient because we will save both time and materials,” Mrs. Krause said. “This will allow us to print more student projects much more quickly.”