From Freshman to Valedictorian, Craftbot 3D Printers Help Grow the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design

The rise of 3D printing in education, especially in universities, started years ago. Now, entire university faculties and laboratories have been established, whose main goal is to give students interested in the technology the opportunity to combine 3d printing with their chosen field of study.

The following article is about one of the leading institutions in Hungary in this field.

The Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design was established more than 140 years ago and it is Hungary's most famous art and design University. From applied arts, industrial design through architecture to media design the school educates on many creative fields. It has a well established network and good relationship with corporations within or outside of the country and other educational institutions.

Basically the university operates on a tripolar system, in which the three poles are education, innovation and technology. The latter's duty is to help the students to materialize their ideas and under this pole are the workshops and labs gathered. The name of this organizational unit is TechPark, and its goal is to keep the technologies up to date and to make it available for the students. Together it has 25 studios, workshops and labs, and we will find the field of digital crafting and the technology of 3D printing among it.

In the educational pillar there are five different institutions:

• Design
• Architecture
• Media
• Theoretical institution
• Doctoral school

Eleven departments are placed in these institutions. This shows again on how many different fields of art and design the students can create.

This semester we got some help from the Craftbot Team and we got a Craftbot Flow-XL temporarily to increase our 3D printing capacity. This was a big boost for our Digital Crafting Lab and helped many students to create a part or a whole project for their studies.

The goal of this case study is to show how much a well placed tool like a quality 3D printer can help creators to enhance their creative workflow and show how many different uses can occur for a printer.

The surest way to give a better view in to the different uses of 3D printing is to show it through real examples with the work of some of our students:

Object Design/Ceramics

József Kovács was one of the participants and was rethinking Dobos cake.

The phases as the artwork is created step by step

“The project shown in the pictures was aimed at reinterpreting the Dobos cake and creating an associated fine dining plate. In the course of my work, I shaped the design from the very beginning to create the core of the mold used in porcelain production with 3D printing, thus expecting more accurate and faster results. Several versions of these have been completed.
The printed cores did their job perfectly and I was able to take perfect negative shapes from them. Once the items were made, they matched each other with perfect precision and could be stacked great.”

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Mátyás Zagiba is also a student in the Ceramic Design specialization. His project was a ceramic lamp and he utilized the available 3D printing technologie.

“I used the 3D printed model to replace the traditionally carved core. Thanks to 3D printing I could create a part with a really precise geometry. This was preceded with the printing of some weight models on which I could check the ratios”

Industrial Design

Kinga Fazekas is learning to become an industrial designer within the design department. In one of her classes her project was to create a barstool. She designed it digitally and then prepared the files and then she 3D printed the parts in the Digital Crafting Lab. After she was over with the assembly and the finishing touches, she just created a fluent and sophisticated maquette.

Fashion and Textile Design

Kamilla Szemere created an interesting collection with many pieces where she combined modern prototyping technologies. One piece consists of specially shaped pearls that were 3D printed. The nearly 1350 pearls were printed with FDM technology and took nearly one and a half months, in which we used up all of the remaining machine time when no other student would use it. But despite the long printing time, she could finish her collection and present it.

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Eperke Fanni Szabó is studying as a textile designer and as a piece of her collection she created some interesting organic shapes that she could wear. She used classic knitting techniques and 3D printing during her work.

Let's hear how she describes it:

“This year human reproduction was our theme on the fashion specialization. I chose the designer babies, humans modified with CRISP-R technology as inspiration. In my project I took a piece of human DNA and tailored it to a female upper body and deformed it for my liking. So the object created seemingly shapes the movement and extent of the body. The other part of my design was two knitted clothes where I also reworked disintegrating and humanly modified DNA. My goal was to collide the two medium, 3D printed hard plastic and the gentleness of the knitted fabric.”

Ferenc Kovács-Nagy is the leader of the Digital Crafting Workshop, he helps the students to create their ideas and teaches 3D printing and the use of other rapid prototyping machines. Based on his experience they use the available technologies more often and cleverly.

“From semester to semester, more and more students visit the workshop to carry out a project assignment and think more and more broadly using the different technologies. It has also been observed over the years that students are increasingly experienced and make better use of design softwares be it vector graphics or 3D modeling”

The use of additive technologies in particular is also on the rise and rapid prototyping is becoming a well known term. At the end of the semester, when the execution of the design tasks also began, the lab reached full capacity in terms of the amount of 3D prints and equipment was in operation 24/7. Finally, we got help from CRAFTBOT. We were temporarily provided with a Craftbot Flow XL machine during the high load period, which allowed us to reduce the utilization of the machines and all the students were able to finally make their parts for the semester.

“3D printing has been used to a much greater extent by students than ever before. Because they come from a wide variety of creative fields, they often present us with exciting challenges. At the same time, this growing demand puts a heavy pressure on the lab and forces us to constantly expand. However, the machine we borrowed is a perfect example of how much extra capacity a well-placed and advanced device can provide and how much help it can provide in education.”

As the examples and experiences mentioned above show, the increasing use and deeper knowledge of 3D printing offers many far-reaching opportunities for students. And the collaboration between MOME and craftbot is a perfect example of how industry players can help shape the professionals of the future.