The first time I saw a 3D printer was at the 2012 Orlando Mini Maker Faire. Among the many interesting projects and technologies on display at the Faire were a number of hand built 3D printers. They seemed cool at the time, but didn’t stand out any more than the quadcopters, dancing robots or other technologies that I had read about on various websites and was now was seeing in person for the first time. I didn’t know it then, but I had just been introduced to a new hobby that would lead me to build three of my own 3D printers, run a Maker Camp session to teach 3D printing to local kids and launch an initiative to bring a Makerspace to Palm Beach county.
On June 7th of this year, Palm Beach LED received a notice that we were pre-qualified to be one of 100 global Maker Camp super affiliates. This notice invited us to apply to host a free Maker Camp for local teenagers, which we promptly did. On July 3rd, we received official notification that Palm Beach LED would be a 2013 Maker Camp super affiliate. Continue reading…