Geek Girl & 3D Printing

One of the things I noticed at the Brighton Mini-Maker Faire was the number of women involved. In the past, they tend to have been middle-aged women on the craft side of things (representatives of the WA, I suppose), but this year I noticed that they are bright young things doing electronics, computing and 3D printing! (One phrase guaranteed to get my notice: "There's some young women over there doing 3D printing").

There are also a number of web sites dedicated to what might be termed the Geek Girl phenomenon, notably GeekGirlCon (a geek girl convention in Seattle, Washington State, U.S.A, but most active on Facebook) and The Mary Sue, sort of geek gossip for girls. I noticed this article on there: 17-Year-Old Girl Invents Cellphone Heart Test For Patients In Developing Countries, which is something you'd expect a team of scientists from Oxford or Harvard Medical School to be working on, not a 17-year old student. I like the way she kept going even when she was failing: I think after a few weeks I'd have given up.

There's also a convention in London for 3D printing, the 3D Printshow in October. Make magazine have also been running a 3D printing weekend and have a slideshow presentation of day 1 and day 2. This is an example of what can be made:

It's called a Nautilus gear, but whether it's practical or just for display I don't know. Impressive anyway.