Project Update: Art Letter for Market Day

Project Update: As detailed previously on this blog the students from this classroom have an upcoming Market Day project where they have to run a small scale business.  The students were keen to adapt the 3D Printer to provide a means for producing word art of phrases that they could then mount on wood.   They wanted to use the 3D Printer to produce the lettering.    In various testing and trialing the students attempted to print various phrases and lettering as detailed in the previous print.   After deciding to use pallet wood as their backing wood, the students then used sandpaper to take away the rough edges of the wood and then used a commercial staining wood stain that was available to produce a finished affect on the wood.   The last stage was then to determine which colour PLA worked with the stained wood and the size of the font and lettering used.    The students made the decision to focus on the "Dream & Achieve" phrase.   The font Dream measured 130mm across and was 60mm high as well as being 5mm thick.   The ampersand in the middle was by far the smallest of the three

measuring 30mm by 30mm.   The final part of the design was the "Achieve" this was also 130mm across but in contrast to the 'Dream' was only 30mm wide but also 5mm high.     This lettering was designed to sit on wood that was 450mm long and was 50mm high.   Originally it was thought the 'dream' would be in a different colour, such as the purple PLA.   However as is shown in the test print on the left the 'Dream' part of the print has a dark stain created on the wood and while the 'achieve' stands out the 'dream' part of the project is hard to identify at distance.  The next step for the student is to work through different colours contrasting to the dark background to see what stands out and is effective at making the print be more of a display piece.   The students have already identified Glow-In-the-Dark Filament as important to this project.   The teacher has given feedback to the students related to the print and how best to attach the lettering to the wood (currently experimenting with wood glue).   The teacher has also spoken to the students about the mounting of the 3D Printed lettering.  In the last prototype shown above the students have not spaced the lettering evenly, and although it is not obvious from the photograph they have not removed the excess PLA from the lettering meaning that some of the lettering is not sitting flat on the wood.