Hummingbird Boards and 3D Printing: You won't believe what happened next...

At our last meeting in Warsaw, a teacher asked about combining Hummingbird Boards and other STEMLab tools such as 3D printers and Vernier Sensors.  With that in mind I took a look at the Hummingbirdkit.com site to see if they had any ideas/tutorials for doing just that.  They definitely do! If you go to the site and choose the Tutorials button (http://hummingbirdkit.com/learning/tutorials) you'll go a list of great tutorials dealing with these topics.  Make sure you choose Hummingbird and other Maker Tools in the Find Tutorials Tagged option field and you'll see an annotated list of topics including Vernier Sensors, Makey Makey, Arduinos, and Squishy Circuits.

I want to talk a bit about the 3D printing option.  When you go to the page you'll see a number of pictures for individual parts (gears, pulleys, motor mounts, led diffusers, etc.)  Clicking on the picture will also download the .stl file for 3D printing.  There are also two example projects:
- A Hummingbird controlled motorized rover (click on the PK Graff's Class Project link to see an example of this project in a high school classroom)
- Four linked .stl files for building a crank and piston system (see diagram below.)

I downloaded and printed a couple of the gears and pulleys with no problems.  It is important to keep the size constant for the projects kits so that everything fits well with the hummingbird parts.