students

Zusätzliche Öffnungszeiten für Studierende

Zusätzlich zu unseren Open Lab Zeiten jeden Mittwoch von 14 bis 20 Uhr gibt es dieses Sommersemester auch Zeiten, an denen das Lab extra für Studierende geöffnet ist.
Studierende können ab sofort auch an Dienstag und Donnerstag zu folgenden Zeiten im Fab Lab arbeiten:

               Dienstags von 13 – 16 Uhr

               Donnerstags von 14 – 17 Uhr

Diese erweiterten Öffnungszeiten richten sich gezielt an Studierende der Universität Siegen, um zusätzliche Zeiten zu bieten, um an ihren Projekten zu arbeiten. Personen, die nicht der Universität angehören, können wie gewohnt mittwochs zum Open Lab kommen.

Hier gelten dieselben Empfehlungen, wie auch zum Open Lab:

  • nicht mehr als 20 Gäste im Lab
  • 3G empfohlen (genesen, geimpft, getestet)
  • um durchgehendes Tragen der Maske wird gebeten
    (Ausnahme: Trinken und Essen in bestimmten Bereichen)
By Marios Mouratidis, ago

“Garbage – Environment – Design” – With Art Against Littering

As part of the cooperation project “Garbage – Environment – Design“, Sarah and Marios, two of our students, travelled to Palestine last year in September. The two-week project, organised by the Goethe-Institut in Ramallah, was intended to counteract the throwaway culture in public spaces from Europe that prevails there and to build a bridge between consumption and art. For this purpose, approaches of “upcycling” should be used, which make something new out of something old.

Two students each from Germany, France and Palestine were involved in the intercultural project and designed the exhibition and built matching exhibits in a workshop. During the ten-day stay on site, prototypes were to be produced collaboratively from everyday objects through upcycling in order to draw attention to everyday environmental problems. The project benefited from the input of other Palestinian and international experts from the fields of design, art, education and architecture.

The material such as pallets, Yton stones and plastic bottles were picked up directly from the street and were only a part of the countless resources used.
An example of the effective use of materials are the hanging gardens consisting of two green bottle walls planted with mint, which were set up to welcome exhibition visitors at the main entrance of the Goethe Institute. The results were exhibited in the Franco-German cultural area for intercultural discussion and experimentation.


In addition, during the students’ visit to Palestine, the action day “Art and Consumption” took place, in which the residents were to actively and collectively clear a piece of land of rubbish and litter.

The aim of the project was to communicate civil rights, but above all civic duties, and to mobilise local young people in particular to take on civic responsibility. Among others, the project was carried out in cooperation with Vecbox, the first Palestinian Makerspace, who brought local expertise.

Sarah and Marios were already able to draw on experience gained in the West Bank through the Yallah cooperation and exchange project in April last year, as well as through the come_IN project.

By Marios Mouratidis, ago

Aya – a Selfmade 3D Printer

Aya – that’s a 3D printer that students of the Human-Computer Interaction master’s program produced in the winter semester 2015/2016 as part of the “3D Printing” seminar.

At the beginning of the seminar, the students were first familiarized with the basics of digital fabrication: What manufacturing processes are there, what materials can be used for printing, what are the possible application potentials? They also learned more about the individual steps of 3D printing: from modeling, to slicing (the “translation” of a 3D model into instructions for the printer), to the printing itself. For the subsequent project work, four students decided to devote themselves to building their own 3D printer.

The project participants used a kit as a basis, which already contained most of the parts needed for construction. All blueprints as well as the control software are available open source and so the students first built the printer according to the distributor’s template. However, they quickly discovered that not everything was working properly. So they decided to print some housing parts themselves using a different 3D printer in the Fab Lab and made other changes to improve print quality, such as adjusting the holder for the consumable. This was followed by a longer calibration phase, because the automatic support systems, which the printer actually has for this, unfortunately didn’t work quite as well as expected.

The students spent an entire semester working on the printer, which they named Aya (after a Japanese movie character). Aya is a Delta Robot 3D printer whose distinctive feature is its design: The three-axis system, which differs from conventional printers with linear axis systems, enables fast, precise printing. In addition to smaller test prints, the first larger prints such as an owl or a vase have already been made. Initial test runs indicate that Aya can print at a fabulous speed of up to 300-350 mm/second.

Even though the study project has now been completed, the students want to continue working on optimizing the 3D printer. For example, the installation of the control electronics or the stabilization of the base frame is being considered here to make Aya more transportable. There are also plans to test Aya with other materials such as ABS – the plastic used to make Lego bricks, for example – because so far only PLA, an environmentally friendly plastic based on (corn) starch, has been used as a material.

The students themselves learned a lot about 3D printing during the seminar and by building Aya. On Technology Day, the printer was presented and used for the first time in front of a broad public.

Aya in full size:

By Marios Mouratidis, ago