This semester a friend of mine named Madison Kambic started to get interested and involved with 3D printing. I decided to interview her in order to gain a perspective of what 3D printing means for people who aren’t just getting a grade in a class. For a quick backstory on Madison, she is a junior English major who is a proud member of Swing Dance and Student Ambassadors.
I began with a simple introductory question: What brought you to 3D printing? The answer was also simple “I thought the 3D printing club was interesting and decided to explore it.” She was one of the handful of people at the club’s meeting at the beginning of the semester and since then she has bought her own filament and creates trinkets for her friends and family. Her first task once she bought her filament was creating a “really huge JMU cube” which is a wonderful purple color. This morphed into a small project of hers where she created JMU cubes for her mentor in Student Ambassadors as well as a present for a senior in the same organization.
One of the JMU cubes that Madison has printed.
I then asked her if she had any projects, in particular, that she wanted to tackle. She is a huge Legend of Zelda fan, and said that she wants to print out Zelda figurines since it is much cheaper than buying them but it is also a lot more fun. One object that she has printed that she enjoys, which is Zelda themed, is a Rupee—a form of currency in the game. When she first printed it she showed it off to all of her friends, excited that she now has a piece of Zelda with her while also being impressed by how well it turned out.
This is the Rupee Madison Printed.
We continued to talk about her interests in 3D printing and the conversation shifted to her involvement in the 3D printing club. She will be Vice President of the 3D printing club next year which brings us to her thoughts surrounding 3D printing. “Being an English major, this type of stuff – 3D printing, [technical designs] – isn’t something I’m used to. [However,] if I can find it fun anyone can” which is the attitude she hopes to bring to the club. She also wants to spread the interesting concept of 3D printing to the JMU population in general.
As we were ending this interview, we were talking about the cool possibilities of printing and more about the figurines she mentioned. I said something about painting some of my prints, and she mentioned that painting her prints was one of her favorite things, “3D printing kind of makes an art piece that I can go back to and finish later.” Being in a 3D printing class I viewed most of my prints as means to an end. We’re taught and shown that the opportunities surrounding 3D printing are very practical, but we forget that we can also simply print objects we wish to see and enjoy in the world.
A birthday present Madison printed for me.
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