In May 2018, engineering students from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in the USA, travelled to the Colombian city of Cali, to showcase their bespoke solar powered 3D printing system they produced for a specialist makers space in the deprived district of Aguablanca. The team worked closely with partners from Universidad Autónoma de Occidente (UAO) and a foundation called Fundautonoma
In 1997, UAO created the Social Enterprise of Publications within the main university campus. The business was set up to obtain economic resources to support the social work of the university. Since then, it has provided photocopying and duplication services, expanding its business to the area of print and binding. It has now been decentralised. The services have been expanded to include large format digital printing, screen-printing, business carding and production of advertising material. Through this initiative they are giving direct employment to 45 people from vulnerable sectors. The proceeds of these sales are used to finance the social task of Fundautonoma.
Fundautonoma provides technological programs of higher education for young people of strata 1 and 2. It has to date trained more that 13,000 people from all over Cali. Now the foundation has a base in the Aguablanca district – an area at risk of attracting youth to gang activities. The foundations aim is to set up a maker space with specialist equipment and training workshops. The target is to develop marketable skills in advanced manufacturing: computer aided design, rapid prototyping techniques such as laser cutting and thermoforming.
For this reason the development of a solar powered 3D printer made sense. The RIT electrical, industrial and mechanical engineering students designed the system to seamlessly switch power sources – from use on the network and renewable energy. This is especially important for communities with unreliable power sources.
RIT student Josh Cohen explained “The goal is to implement this solar powered printing system…because their electricity isn’t that reliable and because 3D printers need a constant flow of electricity to function…Having those backup power sources like the solar panels or the battery or also being able to plug into the grid are all things that will keep this printer up and running in the community.”
The group collaborated remotely with UAO students who simultaneously developed a way to use recycled plastic bottles as reinforcement in the 3D printing filament.
The collaboration is designed to develop student and faculty project and research exchanges focused on international product design theory and commercialisation for developing economies. With an aim to help students from both universities gain design and development experience while making a broader social impact.
“The more experiences that we can create for our students, the more realistic those experiences are, the better prepared they’re going to be to make an impact after graduation… We need to make, for this program in particular, entrepreneurship in a global environment real to our students and the sooner we can make that real, the better.” Marcos Esterman, Associate Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering, RIT
“The UAO students got to see the excitement and the needs of people within a very different environment not very far from where we are [in Cali], we got to see that the work at the university can be much more meaningful when is tied to a community in need, and our friends from Rochester got a sense of how different realities can be in different countries…we are already working on next year’s set of projects.” Álvaro José Rojas Arciniegas, Program Director of MA Engineering in Product Development, Faculty of Engineering, UAO
Further Information
Fundautonoma is a foundation that was set up in 2000 by the Universidad Autónoma de Occidente (UAO) in Cali, Colombia. It aims to improve the quality of life and social development of the most unprotected communities of the Pacific Region. The foundations strategy was defined that the social program was self-managing and generating its own economic resources. The social enterprises within the university, seeks to provide services to the university community and to different institutions. The foundation provides specialist training to people living within the more vulnerable districts of the city.
www.uao.edu.co/funda/
The Aguablanca District is a sector of Cali, the third largest city in Colombia. It is composed of three comunas: 13, 14 and 15, on the eastern fringe of the city. The population is largely made up of people displaced by violence or migrants from the Pacific Region. This sector of the city is home to approximately 30% of the population of Cali.
**Main article image shows the solar powered 3D printer being presented to a group of young students. They touched real solar panels and experienced the 3D printer harnessing energy from the sun. ©RIT/UAO, 2018
