Universities have always had shops, science librarian Dean Walton says, but not a shop like this.
The new DeArmond MakerSpace in the Price Science Commons and Research Library, a manufacturing wonderland of 3D printers, scroll saws, laser cutters and more, is now open to students and instructors at the University of Oregon.
“What people needed were places to solder and places to 3D print,” Walton said. “We gave them those.”
The MakerSpace was made to give students — regardless of their majors or degree programs — a place to perfect their projects, professors a place to build better teaching materials, and staff a place to make materials for installations.
“A chemistry professor who wants to show different bond angles on a molecule might use our 3D printer to make a model,” Walton said. “The Museum of Natural and Cultural History could make copies of fossils because the…