3D Printing - Junior Classroom Challenge Part 2

Challenge: For student to create a personalised iPhone/Phone stand. 

Background: This was part of the challenge that was presented to the students at the start of term three in New Zealand.   They had come back and to get them creative, to get them designing, their first task was to create a unique pair of earrings - this worked well and was very much a short term print.

The next challenge in this series was to make a phone stand.   The criteria for this was that the stand needed to be personalised somehow, had a shape that was also on the design and we encouraged the students to come up with some unique or interesting design aspects.   The print is a medium level print (see below) so the print is a challenge for a classroom to print with one printer, however we are doing this over the next few weeks as time allows.

The personalisation details can be seen on the left of this photo.  The student wanted to gift it to a family member (hence the 'P') they wanted to include a star on the top of the main base and also a heart.

An interesting aspect of this design was that the student opted to introduce storage to the base of the design, as shown in the first photograph.   This storage did not compromise the ability of the stand to work.   

The student responsible for the completed project started working on 3D Printing and design this year having no prior experience to design and creation, but has picked up the process quickly.   

Level of Difficulty: Medium.   The base for the design is one of the many templates available via Tinkercad.    The students design process was around sizing and then thinking what additional features that she might be able to add to the design, storage on the inside worked really well as did the overall design.

Timeframe: The print took five hours to complete which was reflective of the size and the purpose of the print.   There was limited potential to make this any smaller as it would then not have been able to complete it purpose.

Size: The stand measures 80mm long was 60mm wide and at top of the back of the design was 80mm hight.   Again like the timeframe given the specific purpose of the print this dimension was the minimum required for it to be successful.

Not only was the stand able to easily fit a variety of regular size phones we also discovered that it could also balance an iPad, although we did need to be careful to ensure that the iPad was not knocked as it would then tip over.

What we would do differently/next steps for students: 

We have printed a variety of stands previously that have included personalisation, an example of which from 2023 is shown here.  In these examples storage became an active and challenging aspect so in this case the student could have looked to expand their storage so perhaps look at a hinge or a small door or lock - however this would substantially increase the difficulty and make this a more challenging project.   As it was the student concerned was extremely happy with the outcome.

We have also a number of examples of projects that you can view relating to these on our blog, as always your can use the search bar and type in the name of the project or example and look for a variety projects completed by students on this topic over the years that this blog has been running.