Equipment and Spaces

The Made By Design Lab maintains space and equipment across Penn State’s University Park Campus.  Our wide and varied facility footprint enables our research and education endeavors to have maximum impact on campus.

Printers

The lab’s printing systems are focused on the creation of polymer structures.  Our capabilities cover the spectrum from small, open-source hobbiest-type printers all the way up to larger, industrial, multi-material systems.  Our goal is for each system to posess a unique aspect that allows it to further our research or educational activities.

Objet350 Connex3

Provides multiple materials 3D printing capabilities with a range of material properties from rigid materials (vero family) to flexible materials (tango family). This printer also provides voxel printing capabilities to print parts with function gradients.

Formlabs Form 2

This is an SLA printer that gives the lab to print high resolution parts using different materials. The parts from this printer are used for making high accuracy prototypes, and to visualize high detailed designs all at a relatively low cost.

Z-Morph 2.0 SX

This dual material extrusion machine provides the lab with the ability to experiment with functionally gradient prints with a mixing nozzle or two separate nozzles. This machine also has attachments for CNC routing and paste extruding.

Markforged Mark One

The Markforged One provides the lab with the ability to reinforce prints with any continuous fiber such as carbon fiber. This is used in the research lab for developing, testing and analyzing multipurpose functional embedding

Lulzbot Taz 6

This high-quality machine is used for a wide variety of research areas and for general functional prints. For research this machine is used for embedding for off the build plate ready parts, and as the base model for the Virtual Reality Educational Platform.

MakerBot Replicator

The lab’s Makerbots are used for general purposes and to help facilitate learning about additive manufacturing for graduate and undergraduate students who are not directly involved in the Made By Design Lab.

Other KEy Equipment

In addition to our different printers, the lab also possesses several other pieces of key equipment to support our ongoing research projects and educational efforts.  This ranges from bleeding-edge software that can successfully handle the complex geometries achievable with AM all the way to custom-designed “maker carts” capable of engaging students with AM wherever they are.

SEDTAPP Nittany Build Boxes

These Nittany Build Boxes are on the 3D floor of Hammond and contain a 3D printer, a 3D Doodle pen, and a scanner and are used to help teach additive manufacturing. 

Stratasys Voxel Print Software

This allows the lab to import graphic voxel information containing a stack of bitmaps obtained from a CAD model ‘sliced’ into individual layers to create functional gradient materials or intricate patterns on the Objet350 Connex3

Filabot Filament Extruder

The Filabot Filament Extruder takes in plastic and melts it down to make 3D printer filament. This is mostly used to help experiment with recycled 3D printer filament to reuse excess 3D printed material.

3D Systems Sense 3D Scanner

A portable scanner that attaches to an IPad to scan large objects. This allows to lab to bring high detailed entities into a 3D design software. This allows students to design around these objects or to recreate it with additive manufacturing.

HTC Vive VR Headset

This VR headset is used to help educate people on additive manufacturing and in research to test if Virtual Reality is a suitable method of teaching additive manufacturing.

Printing Spaces

Though the lab has a central research location in Engineering Unit B, we maintain equipment in research and learning spaces across Penn State’s University Park campus.  This includes a system housed at CIMP-3D, a world-class facility for AM research located just a few miles from campus.

Made for Design Lab

Located in 301 Unit B, the Made for Design Lab is the main work space for the lab. This is an excellent place for the students in the lab to meet, collaborate, and to print on the printers in the lab which includes the Zmorph, Taz 6, Form 2, and the MarkForged.

CIMP-3D

Located in Building 230 at Innovation Park, CIMP-3D is a lab dedicated to advancing and deploying additive manufacturing technology for critical applications with many different types of additive manufacturing. This is where the lab’s Object350 Connex 3 is located at.

SEDTAPP Design Den

Located in 304 Hammond this is a graduate design space with 3D printers, whiteboards, tables, and more where graduates can go to work, meet, and imagine. There are currently two Makerbot Replicator+ and two Prusa i3 mk3 3D printers at this location.

3D Print Club Space

Located in 312 Hammond, this is a student run space that is dedicated to helping other students learn about 3D printing and to help students and faculty 3D print what they need. 3D printers include TAZ 6, TAZ mini, Prusa i3 mk3, FT-5, CR-10, and FlashForge.