It’s all business for McGoogan Library’s 3D printers

No, you can no longer ask the folks at the McGoogan Library of Medicine to use one of their 3D printers to make you an “Angry Birds” piggybank. That window has now closed.

(Yes, they made one. You missed your chance. This is why you should read UNMC Today.)

For a while, the library used the printers to make whatever people wanted, within reason, in order to introduce the technology to campus.

Now, the library will still make you what you want, for free. Providing, of course, it’s work-related. That is, it can be used for research, educational or clinical purposes.

So it’s no surprise that the library’s two printers are “pretty much busy all the time,” said Tom Gensichen, associate professor and head of systems at the McGoogan Library of Medicine. They’re both moving nonstop, building stuff out of plastic “filament” — “it looks like the stuff on your weed whacker,” Gensichen said. It does. And it comes in a variety of colors. For a while, “glow in the dark” was a favorite. Now, customers seem to like translucent.

Warm gray seems to reproduce in the color closest to bone.

And what do they make? Again, anything — as long as it’s work-related, at an academic medical center.

Medical students tend to ask for skulls. 3D models of molecules are popular, too.

They can make half a human heart at a time. “The other half is printing now,” Gensichen said, as the machine worked laying down filament at a steady pace.
Researchers have taken to developing 3D plastic prototypes of potential inventions, to see if their designs are going to be practical, if they will really work.

Graduate students have formed a 3D printing club, the UNMC Makers.

What else? Pathology specimens.

“Give us a file,” Gensichen said, “and we’ll see if it works.”

If you have an idea, click here and fill out a printing request.