3D Printing: Developing Skills and Design Techniques

 

Challenge: For a student to develop their design skills using Tinkercad and their iPad - in this case the student is using the Tinkercad App, however it would be also possible to complete using it as a web browsing program (without the need to download any software etc).  

Background: It has been explained that we use in the classroom the Tinkercad Classroom set up to manage the students and their designs.  Again this is something that we've done repeatedly over several years.  There is no charge to establish or run this and we have several years of classrooms on file, where the designs of the students have remained live after the class has closed or moved on.   Students are given an individual account, monitored and managed by the teacher, with essentially a limitless amount of design space.

In this instance the purpose behind this is the student wanted to develop their own design skills.  They have located an .stl file which is the cat on the right hand side.  The student felt that they would be able to replicate and copy the design using the main features on the Tinkercad design interface.

Level of Difficulty: Low - the idea is for the student to recreate the design as accurately as possible and as of yet they have been unable to do so accurately, by printing the design so the student has that to work off as opposed to using a virtual design in the workspace.   You can see from the screenshot that the process has started but needs significant completion.

Size: The print measures 90nn from the head to the tip of the tail.   The main body was 40mm high, 40mm wide and 60mm long.   The feet were 10mm square.   The head was 30mm square.

Cost/Price: The print used 28g of regular PLA which according to the Bambu Studio Labs software had a price point to complete the original design of $0.70c.  

Timeframe: This print took one hour and three minutes to complete using the regular settings on the Bambu H2D, with the regular infill.  In this example the detail is going to go into the students design rather than the pre-made/predesigned version.

What we would do differently/Next Steps for the students: The student need to refine their design so it closely matches the original in details, and features.   The intention is to say to the student once they have completed their copy and encourage them to develop their own design and consider what would be the purpose of the design.