Challenge: Using creativity, innovation and personalisation students from a Y3/4 classroom create a unique product for our school market day.
Background: You can follow the origins of this project by looking at the initial design concept, which was created in March 2024. The design at this point was the laser cut box without the 3D Printing combination. When initial ideas for the group were discussed one of the points of interest was a jar with multicoloured LED - with the 3D Printer used to create the bracket to hold the light in place. This was published on this blog as part of the Market Day 2019 posts on this site, which is located here.
The students had brainstormed ideas around different aspects of the light - however as we had been experimenting with glow-in-the-dark projects in the classroom the link between this and the light box seemed obvious. We have used various
PLA Glow-in-the-dark filament since 2018 on this blog and since then the quality of it and the ease of use has improved significantly - we were reluctant to use it when first starting as it tended to up somewhat unreliable and could at times block the printer heads (particularly it seems if it was not air tight sealed).
The laser cut file for this project was supplied by a student who created the original in 2024. The students from the classroom then used this file by including the name of the person who wanted to purchase it on the outside.
This was designed in Tinkercad and was a straight forward design for the students who were able to do so independently. The decision on the size of the lettering was determined by the number of the letters contained in each students name.
Level of Difficulty: Low - the 3D CAD design for the project was a simple series of steps. The design for the box came from a former student was created using Sketch Up and again was relatively simple - a rectangular box with inserted circles as shown in the picture left.
Size: The box was 120mm high and 80mm wide. It took ten minutes to laser cut using 3mm MDF wood. The size of the 3D printing element of the project varied depending on the number of letters in the purchases name, in this example the lettering was 40mm and 120mm high.
Cost/Profit: We estimated the box to cost $1.50 of MDF, the 3D Printed PLA was $1.50 (approx.) the most significant cost of the entire project was the LED lights in this case they were purchased from a local dollar store which cost $4.00 although with hindsight this could have been ordered online from overseas produces of material such as Temu. In the Market Day this year the students were able to sell ten units of this project - at $7.50 per unit for the total sales of $75.00.
Timeframe: As noted ten minutes for the laser cutting. Each of the panels of took just under one hour to print using the
Snapmaker 3D Printers. The total time for the production of each unit also included PVA wood glue which was applied to the box after it had been completed
What we would do differently/next steps for the students: The Market Day for 2025 was held in the evening when it was not dark, the students noted that if they had been able to produce a box or another way to view the box with the glow-in-the-dark elements working so it was more obvious - some people viewing it during light hours missed the significance of how it displays (which is essentially it glows throughout the night, particularly with the LED light glowing.
You can view further details on this project by using the search tag 'light box' and the search bar on the right hand side of this page.
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