3D Printed Designs: Extending Junior Students

Challenge: For students to create unique design ideas for 3D Printing, with the students being seven year olds.

Background: This series of prints has been evolving over time this term, which has been led by a student who has been developing their design ideas and design skills using Tinkercad.

We have been following the progress of the student during this phase of their development and have documented how the designs have evolved on this blog.   You can see the design progress here.

The last stage of the designing for the student to master the use of the linking.   The linking can be replicated then from design to design so the student is able to duplicate this for a single design.    The latest version of this is shown top left.    Here the student had significant gap between the different parts of the design.

The design took four hours to print.   The student then took the design and reduced its size by factor four.  This reduced the time of the print from four and a quarter hours to just under one hour.   The new dimensions for the print were 100mm across was 70mm high and was 5mm wide.   The intention was to ensure that the linking is a hundred percent robust, correct and functional.

The process of reducing the size took place of the result of a single click and drag movement.

We have said to the student involved that they can continue to develop this until they are satisfied with the final product, and that the process is completed.   The finished version will be then saved onto the students Tinkercad main page and then applied to a variety of shapes and designs.   The student is working independently on this and is eight years old.