I went to the Maker Faire and met up with Jennifer, Shaan, Jason, and Rachel. Overall it was a fun experience and I saw some fascinating projects. The three projects that stood out most to me were the 3D printer, the water swing, and the METRO robot. I learned that the 3D printer prints line by line of plastic to make up the object. The 3D object is rendered on software like Maya (see the video I took on Vimeo for explanation). The printer costs about $1200-1300 and when a part breaks the machine can manufacture itself out of plastic. The METRO card robot and guy were an unexpected surprise in the Arduino tent. It was funny to see little kids interact with a robot their own size. (see video)

The water swing doesn’t get the kids wet when they swing directly under it.  However the water flows when the user is in the air away from the center of the swing. The tricky part is getting off with out getting soaked.

WATCH video of robot in action

The objects above were were made of plastic on the onsite 3D printer by MakerBot Industries.

Here is short video on my vimeo page I took while there. WATCH the 3D printer video