The First Maker Space on Rails

The second annual Millennial Trains Project transcontinental journey is fortunate to host the first ever mobile maker space on board the 1956 Budd-built dome-lounge Silver Splendor (originally the CB&Q’s Silver Buckle). Built as a dome-coach, the interior was converted so that one side of the dome has couches facing each other across the aisle, and the other side has tables seating four each. The dome has eight tables—four in the middle seating four each, and two on the ends of the dome seating two each, facing the front and rear windows. On our journey, however, we have fit over 30 people in the dome for lectures and discussions. Even with three people squeezing into seats meant for two, people still have to stand in the aisle in order to fit everybody in. 

With the help of a grant from Eco-Cycle — a joint initiative of pop musician will.i.am and the Coca-Cola Company to promote innovative uses of recycled plastic bottles — David Melo of New York-based 3D Systems, and a technician at City College of New York, brought the following equipment from the company’s Los Angeles office on board the Silver Splendor on Tuesday, before it and the two MTP sleepers departed behind the northbound Coast Starlight on Wednesday to meet the group in Portland on Thursday:

• A CubePro Trio 3-color 3D printer, measuring about two and a half feet on each side, which uses virtual clay to make medium-sized models using instructions from design applications and 3D scanners
• A Cube3, a smaller, 2-color 3D printer measuring about a foot on each side, using ABS (similar to Legos) and PLA (biodegradable) plastics.
• An Ecocycle printer, made by 3D Systems, about the same size as the Cube3, which makes objects using RPTE plastic with about 20% recycled content
• A hand-held 3D scanner, and
• a Samsung Galaxy tablet and an iPad, either of which can be connected to the 3D scanner to make scans of people’s faces and small objects.

Any MTP traveler who wants to may have a bust of him or herself produced by the Cube3 printer, similar to the one pictured. The printers produce the objects layer by layer, adding about a millimeter of material on each level until a certain height is reached, each layer shaped so that the final product takes the desired three-dimensional form. Each print takes anywhere from a half hour to two hours. The shaking of the moving train does not faze the 3D printers, and the final product is not affected by bumps to the machine.

Melo, a born and raised New Yorker, has never ridden any passenger train other than the New York subway and commuter trains in the region. But he is loving our journey so far and says he awaits his next opportunity to take a longer train trip.