Yale Funbotics Partnership with Anycubic Making 3D Printing Accessible

After launching a partnership with the 3D printer company Anycubic, the members of Funbotics held multiple 3D printing workshops over the summer to teach children across the country how to build and use their new Anycubic-donated printers. 

A national non-profit organization, Funbotics provides free STEM education to those in underrepresented and under-resourced communities. Founded in 2016, Funbotics has hosted summer camps, created weekend workshops, and mentored robotics teams for children who don’t have immediate access to STEM, and specifically engineering, tools. 

In partnership with Anycubic, Funbotics plans to host two more large-scale 3D printing camps in the second half of 2022, giving away 100 more of Anycubic’s Mega X printers. 

“The partnership with Funbotics is the first step toward making 3D printing commonplace in households across the U.S.,” said Anycubic representative Melissa Lu.

Anycubic is donating over 150 printers to the Funbotics mission. Funbotics and Anycubic launched their partnership in April with a 3D printer showcase where Funbotics displayed and explained seven different printers to students from the Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology. Attendees heard from Funbotics supporters, including SEAS Deputy Dean Vincent Wilczynski, Anycubic Global Brand VP Yan, and Anycubic U.S. representative and Yale School of Management alumna Melissa Lu. The event concluded with speeches from the Funbotics founders, Pranav Avasarala ‘22 and Andonny Garcia ‘22. 

“We are grateful to SEAS, Tsai CITY, and Yale Pathways to Science, for seeing the potential in two incoming first-years with an ambitious mission and allowing Funbotics to transform into something that has helped over 500 kids,” Avasarala said. “Now, over four years later, we have launched Funbotics nationwide and are thrilled that Anycubic supports our mission.”

Since April, there have been three camps hosted for children nationwide.

“Through these 3D printing ‘bootcamps,’ we teach students how to take the many confusing parts of a printer and assemble it into something that sparks curiosity and creativity,” Garcia said. “They learn computer-aided design in order to create objects in software, and then how they can bring these objects to life with their printer.”