Introducing kids and families to 3D printing: Shapeways at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum

Shapeways show and tell table at the exhibition opening

Shapeways is proud to be working with the Brooklyn Children’s Museum to introduce the next generation of 3D designers, engineers, scientists and inventors to 3D printing. The exhibition “More than meets the ‘I’” opens today and runs through January 19, 2015. It explores the future of biology, health, robotics and technology and features a display of 3D printed products created by our talented designers and 3D printed by Shapeways, as well as the Ultimaker 2 desktop printer.

A view of our exhibition case and show and tell table

I worked with Sandra Vanderwarf, Curator and Collections Manager, and Marcos Stafne, Vice President of Programs and Visitor Experience, at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum as a guest curator to select models from Shapeways that illustrate the possibilities of 3D printing and would be fun and engaging for a young audience.

Preparing the exhibition at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum

The exhibition explores how 3D printed products are made and highlights how 3D printing is used to make complex, custom objects like jewelry, figurines and toys, as well as scientific models like crystals and cells, and practical objects like glasses and prosthetic limbs.

Showing off 3D printed designs at the exhibition opening

It was a fun challenge to write the text and choose the final objects for this exhibition because 3D printing can be difficult for adults to understand. Sandra and I struggled to describe how selective laser sintering works and other 3D printing processes work. Here’s a sneak peek of what we came up with, “Instead of printing a design in ink, 3D printers use melted wax and powdered plastic, or minerals mixed with glue. The printer stacks tiny layers of these materials on top of each other to build a model of your design from the bottom up.”

The Ultimaker 2 with a Full Color Sandstone grumpy cat figurine with full color sandstone powder and an example gypsum, one of the minerals that goes into making full color sandstone

I am really proud to have the opportunity to work on this exhibition, as I started my career as a museum educator and I love museums as spaces to learn and explore. The Brooklyn Children’s Museum is a great partner for Shapeways because they innovated the idea of creating a museum focused on children when they were founded in 1899 and have inspired children’s museums around the country and the world!

I’m excited because the kids and families that come to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum today are the innovators and inventors that will push technologies like 3D printing forward tomorrow. What do you think is next for 3D printing? How can kids help? And finally, how would you describe 3D printing to the next generation?

Are you a kid or a parent that wants to learn more about 3D printing? Try out our Introduction to 3D design & printing for kids tutorial. And for design inspiration, check out the work of Zach Tsiakalis-Brown, one of the youngest Shapeways shop owners!