The Tresnak::Tools workshops are introductory sessions on how to approach the new technologies for their subsequent application in the creative and artistic arena.  These workshops will provide brief introductions to different software and hardware tools: an approach to a specific technology, that is ideal for those people without prior knowledge.

This workshop seeks to be a practical approach to personal digital manufacturing based on building a 3D printer.

Thanks to the combination of factors such as Internet, the democratization of expert knowledge, parametric design and the boom in the do-it-yourself culture, several homemade digital manufacturing projects have emerged in recent years. These projects seek to bring the low-cost manufacturing paradigm to the general public, thus breaking the dependency on articles manufactured in industrial settings. The possibility of manufacturing items by means of a nearly professional precision automated system enables fields such as architecture, industrial design or the visual arts to develop projects using their own rapid prototype methodologies.  The time between the idea and the result is thus reduced dramatically.

This workshop will focus on the Medel RepRap printer from among the different personal digital manufacturing solutions. It is a printer designed under the low-cost and simplicity parameters, capable of printing pieces of considerable complexity on different types of plastic.  One of its specific features is the capacity to print part of the pieces needed to construct a printer of the same model. Specifically, there is a user community for the RepRap printer family that is constantly working to improve its design and development, thus achieving the constant evolution of the machine and its associated technology.

During the workshop, two full machines will be built, calibrated and tested.  The participants will have the opportunity to purchase the basic materials to build their own during printer during the course.*

It will be run by Iker Etxaniz a.k.a. Txapela, industrial engineer with wide experience in computer security, rfid and embedded systems.