This is a 30-45 minute presentation for engaging and educating audiences about 3D printing and to confirm/deny their stereotypes about the additive manufacturing process.

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• An FDM printer, Prusa, Ultimake, Monoprice, Ender, etc…

• Some Thermoplastic 3D Printing filament:

  o If you print with PLA say its made from corn!

  o If you print with ABS say you are printing with the same material Legos are made of!

  o If you are printing with PET/PETG say you are printing with he same materials water bottles are made of!

• Some form of cart or table to elevate the printer for people to see.

• Use a G-code file to print as you are talking and finishes when you are done. Preferably printing a few small objects such as gears or symbols relevant to the event that can be given out. Check these out!

• Know your audience! It is critical that you know your audience and their expertise level. The emphasis of this program will be on presenting to children and novice audiences.

• Some of the questions/jargon may be best engaged to slightly more technical audiences. Here I split green to being for a general novice audience but red being added in for a more experienced audience/questions.

• When presenting to elementary school and middle school children they have very creative suggestions for printing so go along with it because you really can print almost everything!

Today I’m going to talk to you about the magic of 3D printers.

1. What is a 3D printer? And can you say a little bit about how it works? (5 minutes)

• Let a couple of people answer
• Back in the day, people would use their craftsmanship skills to make things like wooden ships, plate armor, instruments, and furniture. These things were beautiful and ornate however took a really long time to make and cost a lot of money, and also if it ever broke you had to go to an artisan/expert to fix it. But in the 1800s during the industrial revolution mass production was invented which made everything so that is was almost the same which made things much faster, cost efficient, and replaceable. But since then there are still a lot of things that can’t be replaced by mass production so 3D printing is a newer way to make things the old way. Here we show an extrusion-based printer with pushes material out of a single nozzle to create hard plastic.
• The 3D printing process was predominately invented in the 1980s. At the time the process was largely patented. Over the past 20 years has become a huge industry for makers and hobbyists as well as open source tools for
• Technically there are many types of 3D printing this one is called Fused Deposition Modeling. Some other forms of printing called SLA.
• If there are “older” people in the audience bring up the Replicator from Star Trek: The Next Generation… if you know you know haha.

2. What kind of objects/things can you make with a 3D printer? (5 minutes)

• Let several people answer its fun to see what people will say!
• Rockets / organs / engine parts / chocolate
• The reason we can make all of these things is because how materials flow. When you heat up some types of plastic they become liquid are able to be pushed out of a nozzle very similar to a glue gun. Other materials use chemicals to harden over time. While they are liquid you can stack them put one layer at a time

3. Why do we use 3D printers?

• Let a couple of people answer
• Short supply lines like in rural areas / military / space
• 3D printing can produce shapes that otherwise may be impossible to create using conventional methods like casting or modeling.

Common questions:

• Can you print guns? o Yes it is already done actually
• Building on the previous question the in 2011 there was one individual who