It was a terrible trifecta: a busted tilt skillet, an obsolete replacement part and thousands of hungry students restarting classes in six days.
For a UC Merced Dining Services team facing a logistical kitchen nightmare, the solution was a savory mix of collaboration and outside-the-pizza-box thinking. And it happened barely 12 giant steps from the broken cooker in the Pavilion dining center.
The replacement part — a plastic bushing for a door handle — was fabricated on a 3D printer in the School of Engineering’s Maker Space lab. It is believed to be the first time the technique, also known as additive manufacturing, was used to replace a machine part at a UC Merced facility.
A 3D printer creates by squirting out layer upon layer of melted material, following a digital blueprint of the desired shape. It’s machining by addition instead of subtraction; by contrast, a lathe cuts away everything the target shape isn’t.
None of that was on Executive Chef Matthew Perez’s mind when he learned in January that one of the three tilt skillets at the Pavilion wouldn’t work. All he knew was that students returning from winter break would pour into UC Merced’s largest dining hall in less than a week.
