When Landon Brown arrived at Camosun after attending UVic, he knew that he wanted to start a club. It was later that he started thinking about the idea of building a 3D printer from scratch.
“I was surprised there wasn’t nearly as many clubs, or as much club enthusiasm, when I came to Camosun,” says Brown, who is now a first-year Electronics and Computer Engineering student. “So, I was like, ‘Heck, I wonder if I could start one?’ I spent a lot of time thinking about it and researching it.”
The club founder took his time coming up with a concept that he felt could be successful. He ultimately came up with the 3D Printing Club, which launched in the spring.
“I was exploring lots of ideas,” says Brown, “but I was keeping track of all these different things, and talking to people about, ‘What do you think would be fun to do on the side? What would make you want to stay after hours?’ And, also, what could I actually pitch to the club board that wouldn’t be too wild that they wouldn’t want to give us any money?”
Brown found his inspiration this spring, after his second semester. He was talking to a Mechanical Engineering student who got to do 3D printing; the college’s 3D printers were restricted to Mechanical Engineering students.
“The only time we’d get to 3D print anything would be at the very end of our program… I thought since 3D printers are new and happening, I could get 3D access to the people who don’t have 3D printing access, and kind of teach people about it; it would give us a good project to go on,” he says.
The original concept of the club was to build a 3D printer from scratch with parts ordered online as well as parts printed on one of the existing printers already on campus. However, an unexpected donation from the college’s Mechanical Engineering department changed the club’s trajectory.
“They had just gotten all new 3D printers for their students, so they had two older ones they were going to get rid of that they donated to the club,” says Brown. “It was big, because now we had 3D printers… One of them was a very complex, industry-standard one from 2005 that was like a $50,000 unit.”
Despite the initial challenges of getting the club off the ground, now that it’s up and running, Brown is excited for its future.
“The amount of good reception we got from the different departments and the school—the push we got to motivate us and everything was really big. So, now we have three projects: building our own printer and restoring these other two. It gives us good groundwork, too, because when we get people who have never done anything with 3D printers—which includes myself, to be honest—it’s nice to be able to print something first and see what even is happening and how it works before you try to build it.”
And with his main goal of starting a student club never far from his mind, Brown is hopeful that the 3D Printing Club will inspire other students, not just his engineering classmates (interested students can get in touch with the club by emailing 3dprintingclub@camosunstudent.org).
“You can make things and learn things,” he says. “It encompasses many different disciplines of different skills and engineering talents: mechanical, electrical, and computer. Even people who want to get more involved in the administrative side of the club and try managing all these different projects, or some of our funding and stuff. It just seemed to be big enough that it would draw in enough people. And it couldn’t just be Electrical Engineering students, either. I wanted everybody to be able to come down and learn about clubs and 3D printers.”