Formlabs 4L Workshop Ideas?

Formlabs Educators
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Greetings fellow educators!

I’m faculty (and dept chair) at a California Community College and we’ll soon be adding a 4L to our MAKE space in our new STEM building. It’s a space that’s there to support students and allow access to 3D printing, laser-cutting, CNC milling, and a plethora of other tools/equipment.
The use of the space is granted on attending safety/use workshops and then passing a safety/use test for the equipment through Canvas. It’s not a classroom specific space. We hold workshops weekly to train students in the equipment and related safety issues. They’re usually about two hours in length

So, as we will be setting up and making available the Formlabs 4L printer in August for the Fall semester 2025, are there issues/items that you experienced users would recommend we include in our training workshops to give students just enough knowledge to print their creations safely without harm to themselves, others, or the equipment. Note: We don’t cover things like how to create a 3D model- that’s done in their respective Engineering or Architecture courses through instruction in Inventor, AutoCAD, Revit, Blender, etc…

Any suggestions for questions on a safety/use test for the 4L would be welcome as well!!!

Excited,

Robert

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Awesome initiatives!

From the Formlabs side, we’d definitely recommend to check out our:
12 week intro to 3D Printing Curriculum

It’s great that they already learn CAD so you can focus on the printing itself. Highlighting and doing exercises around Designing for Additive Manufacturing (or DfAM) will be a worthwhile focus that could involve printing similar designs with different design properties and in different orientations to see how the print or post-processing is impacted.

Additionally, we have tons of webinars and white papers around applications and getting started. A good place to start is our Educators Hub, if you haven’t yet gone through the resources towards the bottom of the page.

The form 4L will be great as a shared resource because beyond the large parts you can print, you’ll be able to print many small parts for multiple students at the same time.

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As for 4L example prints: here are a few 4L files shared in our .form File Community Library that include a larger print (a shoe mold) and a small batch production example (mallets) that @leonhart88 printed with his 4L during a 3D printing event.

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