Our 3D printed math models have arrived in the W&L Mathematics Department ready for the Fall semester. They are in labeled clear plastic containers right over the biz hub in the math work room, so everyone can easily get to them.
We are looking forward to seeing what people do with them in class this coming semester. In particular, if we get any more requests for builds or rebuilds.
Our summer build team attended the centennial MAA MathFest Conference in Washington DC. We had a wonderful time attending many talks, the exhibits and the evening entertainment. (Some of our favorites included the talks by Erik Demaine, Noam Elkies, and the Cirque de Mathematiques.)
Emily and Ryan gave a wonderful (and well attended) talk about their summer work. I spoke about our work in the What Can a Mathematician Do with a 3D printer? session organized by the inspirational Laura Taalman and Ed Aboufadel (below left). Everyone who brought printed objects got to display them at the front of the room (below right).
Laura had her MakerBot mini printing before the session started. A small collection of her models was placed in front of it. Our models were right in front of Jason Cantarella’s 3D printed calculus robot Cy. They were very well received by everyone present.
Here are some of the wonderful models by Christopher Hanusa from Queens College CUNY (left), and Lila Roberts from Clayton State University (right).
Laura spoke about how she designed and printed the Catalan Wireframe Polyhedra, shown below. We were even lucky enough to each be given one by her! I’ve come away from the session with many good ideas of using 3D printing in the classroom, as well as designing new math models.
One last post about the summer printing. We did end up using the ProJet 260 (gypsum) powder printer. We printed two objects – the solid Strange Bowl, and the Tumor Model. Both had colors added with help from Dave Pfaff. (There is a complicated color bit map involved.) The tumor model’s colors roughly correspond to the distance from the center of the model. While these models are beautiful, they are not as robust as some of our other models. They won’t go into general circulation, but instead will be in our display case.
Our summer research project has officially ended. Emily and Ryan have been phenomenal. Together, we’ve designed and 3D printed over 46 math models during the past 9 weeks. Given that our first week was spent working on the math and learning computer programs, we’ve averaged a little over 6 models a week. Phew!
We also 3D printed models that other folks designed, which means we’ve well over 55 different models in total.
We are 
all currently at the 2015 MAA MathFest conference in Washington DC. Emily and Ryan will be talking about their work in a student research session, and I will be discussing our work in a session on What can a mathematician do with a 3D printer? organized by the inspirational Laura Taalman and Edward Aboufadel.
Before I left to come to MathFest, I had W&L photographer Kevin Remington take some stills of just a few of our models in a professional light box. The results are fantastic. Many of these photos appear in Thingiverse, as well as my web page.
These photos show: a few of the quadratics surfaces we designed and printed; 
the strange bowl family; some of our ”sliced” volumes; and the part of a helicoid, the “Bulge Head” solid, and Voronoi Klein Bottle.
