Digital Fabrication Lab

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Explore. Experiment. Create.

Who We Are

Student Using Router

Our Digital Fabrication Lab is a small-scale, department funded lab with the mission of serving our students and interdisciplinary curriculum offered within the Art & Art History Department. It is a place for students to bring their vision to life in a safe, industry-standard laboratory. In order to provide the best experience possible for our students, access to the woodshop and Digital Fabrication Equipment is limited to students enrolled in the Department of Art and Art History.

The Woodshop

The woodshop is open to all students enrolled in the Department of Art and Art History who have completed ART170. Contained within the shop are a variety of traditional woodworking tools as well as our two gantry router CNC machines.

Equipment & Hours

Equipment List & Information

3-Axis CNC Router

The K2 and Forest Scientific are both large format computer numerical controlled (CNC) router tables capable of milling complex 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional shapes in a variety of materials.

3D Printers and Scanners

We have 8 3D printers available for our students; 7 FDM (fused deposition modeling) printers and 1 SLA (stereolithography apparatus) resin printer. Our 3d scanner allows users to digitize real world objects to an accuracy of 0.005 of an inch.

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Hours & Access

  • Sunday-Thursday 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m
  • Room number: J100A

Digital Fabrication Lab Contact

Cecelia Kreider

  • Woodshop Supervisor and Fabrications Coordinator

Equipment List & Information

Laser and High Force (vinyl) Cutters

We have two laser cutter/engravers, a Universal with a 60-Watt laser and an Epilog with a 120-Watt laser. The laser follows a vector path to engrave or cut through material. The Klic-N-Kut Maxx High Force Cutter is a top-of-the line digital die cutter with 950g of cutting force and up to 600mm/sec cutting speed that can cut a variety of materials.

Tutorials & Resources

Lab Software Tutorials

ACCESS TO PROFESSIONAL SOFTWARE

Colorado Engraving - Laser cutting and engraving

Fort Collins Plastics - Laser cutting and engraving

Rocky Mountain Waterjet and Laser - Waterjet and laser cutting of metal in Greeley, CO

Ponoko - Online laser cutting service

Shapeways - Online 3d printing in many materials

Fort Collins Creator Hub - 24/7 access to shop space and tools

Outside Fabrication Options

OTHER COMMERCIAL RESOURCES

Free Resources

THE FOLLOWING LIST IS FREE & OPEN SOURCE

Processing: Programming Language - Processing is an open source programming platform used by visual designers and artists working in new media and electronic art. Processing was developed to help teach non-programmers the fundamentals of computer programming in a visual context.

Autodesk 3d Design - Engineering and Construction software free licenses for students.

Sculptris - Digital sculpting software, primarily focused on clay like sculpting very similar to Zbrush.

Inkscape - Vector based art and design software. This software can be used to create and edit vector-based illustrations, line art, logos, and complex paintings. Inkscape is very similar in operation to Adobe Illustrator

Blender - is an opensource 3d computer graphics suite used for animation, art, visual effects, 3d printing, interactive applications, and computer games.

Meshmixer - Do you need to clean up a 3d scan, do some 3d printing, or design an object that fits something else? Meshmixer can help. Think of it as a sort of "Swiss Army Knife" for 3d meshes.

This to That - Need to know how to get two things to stick together? Check out This to That!