As part of this year’s Girls’ Day, we once again had the opportunity to give girls from class 5–8 in small groups an insight into the world of polymer engineering, using Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) as an example.
To begin, we provided a brief and accessible overview of the fundamentals of polymers: What are plastics, how are they produced, and where do we encounter them in everyday life?
After that, we took a closer look at the additive manufacturing process of FFF: How can a part be created from filament? What types of infill structures exist? And which materials can be used?
The main focus was on the hands-on part: Under the theme “From Filament to Design Object,” the students developed their own ideas, realized them using modeling clay, and digitized them with a 3D scanner so they could be printed – a tangible insight into the entire process from the idea to the finished component.
