Sunday, August 4, 2019

3D Printed Student Name Badge - with Cow

Badge design featuring the 'Cow" design.
Challenge: To produce a personalized label for a student as a gift.
Background: Having finally finished as a class a significant number of prints that were themed for the school Market Day the shift was now for the students to move back to more individual projects.   One of the significant introductory projects that our students have been involved with is a the printing of a name tag or label.   These typically are a straight forward design being based around one or two simple main shapes that form the base of the design and with a few other features typical of the design in addition to this.  We encourage a level of penalization, which for most students is to include lettering of their name on the base, a hole or way for something to hold it to be inserted (such as a clip or tie) and depending on the individual we have also had students include an image or design with it.   These processes are nearly always created using Tinkercad and are accessible from the main design interface.   In our experience students who are from eight years old and sometimes younger are able to create these projects independently without supervision - we have also created instructional videos in a step by step process to describe this process.   This particular student was working independently as a nine year old and designing something for the first time.  She had the idea for the 'cow' part of the design
Above: Focus on the '
however after searching on Tinkercad she was not satisfied with the designs that she had located. 
As an alternative she searched on Thingiverse and located the cow part of the design.    She was then able to access it from Thingiverse and import it directly into Tinkercad where she was able to incorporate it into the design.   This print was also the first print from a new role of filament.  In our experience these first prints in a run tend to have some small imperfections which seem to result in the printer starting for the first time - as seen around hole in the design and the head of the cow.
Level of Difficulty: Low - this is an introductory task for students taking their first steps in 3D Printing, we have considerable exemplars and examples available from students who have worked on various projects over the past five years that are on this blog including exemplars.
Size: The design was 130mm long was 60mm high and was 10mm thick.   The lettering was raised 5mm from the base of the design and the head of the cow was slightly higher.    These could have been modified slightly but the dimensions relative to the design were as required.
Timeframe: Three and a half hours.   This print was produced to standard dimensions that are essentially the default settings for projects produced and posted on this blog - an 8mm nozzle setting with a 20% infill of the print.   The printers that are featured here are now five years old and there are more efficient and newer models that would produce quicker times and prints.
What we would do differently/next steps for students: Nil - the purpose if for the student to independently create something, which they did, for it to be original and personalized, which it was and for it to have a practical purpose which it does.   Mission accomplished.
A full video tutorial of this project (student created) is located here.

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