Nobody from the 24 participants (and two coorganizers) is unfortunately any more in Prague, but all the memories remain. In July 2014 in cooperation with 3DLab at FIT CTU we organised ten days long academic course called Czech out the power of 3D printing! and in this article we would like to present you this wonderful event. Students from 17 different countries had opportunity to learn basics of 3D printing and get to know the famous Czech culture, organizers faced new challenges and everyone made long lasting friendship bonds, which will be almost impossible to tear.
Before you dive into the text, we would like to remind you, that a picture is sometimes worthier than thousand words. And video maybe millions! (brought to you by AVC)
Print me baby, print me out!
The whole academic part of the course was aimed at 3D printing and its technologies: from creating 3D models in computer to operating the printer itself. Students attended almost 30 academic hours with lecturers Miro Hrončok and Jakub Pruša from 3D laboratory at FIT, who prepared very amusing but also enlightening program. Thanks to introductory lectures, all student teams were quickly able to start working on their final project, which was of course aimed to creating and printing 3D models. Every team had to finish an incomplete railway, so a “train” could pass through it with no problems. The railway was put on a big polystyrene board, thus it was necessary to fill the white and boring wasteland with some interesting features. The evaluation considered not just the functionality of railway itself, but also creativity and special ideas of all teams, which made the railway environment special.
Two company visits were also part of the course, both of them to companies doing business in 3D printing. In FUTUR3D, all participants were scanned with special device, which created a 3D model of their face, which made everyone really happy. Second visit was in company PART2PRINT, which is one of the business leaders in industry in the whole Czech Republic and which is able to print very precise and subtle models and prototypes. Thanks to this visit, the students could see totally different view on possibilities of 3D printing, as this is really different from RepRap printers, which were used for their projects.
Praha, the mother of cities
BEST courses, however, have much more to offer than just broadening your knowledge in technical fields. One of the greatest possibilities is an option to meet new countries, cities and cultures. Prague has always been very demanded destination, which can be proven by the fact, that to our course we had unbelievable 310 applications! Chosen participants were indeed very lucky to be able to see the Czech Republic. During the course, the participants visited our capital city several times in all the possible parts of the day. One of the highlights was also a ride in special tram! During the weekend, the participants went out of Prague to the country to see the old castle Karlštejn and stone quarries Amerika.
However, the culture is not just about the sightseeing, especially the Czech one can be tasted from the other sides. One of the program highlights was for example Czech evening with grilled pig and other delicious snacks or music concert of local band Twisted Rod. Participants also could repay us for our hospitality during the International evening, where every country presents their traditions, foods and drinks. And there was a lot of them this year!
Next year again!
We are very happy that the summer course 2014 was a great success, everybody had huge amount of fun and we also gained a lot of experience organizing such an event. To be honest, we cannot wait to the next year for the new topic. Who knows, maybe you will be able to help us with it? If you are interested in organising such events, contact us on hr@bestprague.cz!
And of course, don’t forget to apply to the similar course in Europe!