The next generation of 3D Designers will be the face of the future. That is why it helps to provide them the means to develop their skills while they are still students. If you are a high school or college student looking to get into 3D Printing but can’t because of the price, then this episode will guide you to find affordable opportunities. Tom and Tracy Hazzard share with you some of the very few 3D Printing manufacturers that are currently offering education discounts.
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Educational Discounts
This is the Ask Us Anything segment. We’re back to Education Week because I don’t think we can talk about it enough.
We keep getting a lot of questions about it and there seems to be a huge amount of interest around the education of 3D printing or for 3D printing.
We shifted the focus a little bit more on the educators’ side of things or their view of things. The reason is that it’s the, “How am I going to teach it?” These are many questions. We are going to have Hélène Trudeau on one of our episodes and she is an arts consultant. She consults into school districts. I think that it’s interesting trying to come up with what your program is. You might need a 3D print consultant to help you through that process because there are so many overwhelming decisions.
She’s looking into that and that’s why she wanted to talk to us. It’s a great interview. This episode’s question is, “Are there educational discounts available for 3D printers?”
First off, I think we should say to those manufacturers reading this out there, you should have one.
I was surprised when I checked into this that I only found one company with a printed published program for it. There may be others and if you’re one of those, serve it up. Let us know and we’ll put it on a resources page. For the most part, we found educational discounts only for software, for students and all kinds of stuff or even high-end CAD programs. There are already in the 3D printing industry a lot of free online software resources, Autodesk 123D and Tinkercad. 3DPrinterOS is free for everybody. On the software side, there are definitely some free resources and some inexpensive opportunities with educational discounts. Rhino has an educational program. I know most of it is big CAD programs, SOLIDWORKS do but with 3D printers, there is hardly any with one notable exception and that’s Polar 3D.
I talked to the inventor of it at a trade show once and he designed the machine for education. That’s why it was such a driver for him to have an educational discount and it’s like a $600 printer.
Education Discounts: There’s no reason for these companies not to be giving you education discounts, especially if you’re buying multiple printers.
I think $899 is the normal price for the printer, but with an educational discount, it is $599.
I also liked that one because it’s simple. It’s not an overly complicated printer so it’s easier maintenance for a school district or a school to maintain.
That’s how it looked to us. We’re looking to get one in to review and we’re going to try to schedule that company for an episode. We have quite a busy schedule booked out, but hopefully that’ll happen. We were impressed. There are less moving parts and less to go wrong in this type of printer and it’s built robustly.
I know that like XYZ was going after a low-end $500 printer as well and their idea was students and things like that. I haven’t seen any published education rates, but there may be. If you’re an educator or a school or whatever out there, go and ask because there’s no reason for these companies not to be giving you education discounts, especially if you’re buying multiple printers.
For a school for sure, but as an individual, education discounts for your elementary, high school or college student. There are some out there and but there should be more. We believe and we’ve interviewed a lot of people that believe the key to the future of 3D printing is getting in early with the youth and getting them into it.
Whatever printer you start with, one of those ones where it’s near and dear to you and you tend to stay with what’s comfortable.
We encourage all youths and parents of young children who have an interest in it and want to help their kids get an edge to please jump in and in any which way you can. There definitely are discounts. You may have to hunt for them a little bit.
We hope that helps and if you have other questions about education and 3D printing or anything, you can ask us anything anytime over at our website at HazzDesign.com or anywhere on social media.
You can leave us a voicemail and if you don’t mind having your voice aired with your question, we do that sometimes, although some people seem not to want to be on. We’d be happy to cut in your question and then address it for you. We’ll be back with another question for Education Week. Thanks for reading.
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