3D Printed Projects: Individualised Basic Projects

Challenge: For students to create (independently) a variety of designs that were original and created and personalized for the purpose of a gift.
Background:  Having completed the 'sound lure' project for the year the 3D Printers here at School were available for a variety of projects.   The students were asked to create a concept or idea, which was original, which allowed them to personalize something and then created it independently.  Some of these projects were inspired by work from the past, which has been already featured on this blog.  Full details of those projects are available in the links next to the photographs.

   Left: An introductory name plate for a student completely new to 3D Printing.  The instructions for the student was prepared by another student who tutored the student, and also in the form of a flipped video that students produced earlier in the year.

This is a basic design/concept/idea that has featured many times on this blog which is detailed here.

This took four and a half hours and was 90mm by 60mm and was 5mm thick with the lettering another 5mm (and star) out from the design,

Another project was similar but 'Christmas Themed' with an insert Reindeer, and hearts that wen through the shape, the name of the student in this instance was sunk into the design of the plate (in contrast to the design above when it was raised up from the base).    The student was also working for the first time on a 3D Printing project and like the student involved in the above project is ten years old.  They were able to be paired up with a student who had worked Tinkercad before and the design was original and personalized.   It was 100mm by 100mm and 5mm thick, with a five hour print time.  Again the tutorial video was used as a back up resource to assist with teaching, and there are considerable Christmas themed examples of this on this blog running from simple designs with a name to individually created 3D Projects based around Christmas ideas (such as the Sleigh featured here).   These projects range in difficulty level from basic, which would take five minutes to much more advanced and complicated designs that would potentially require reworking and remodelling.

A slight variation of the above themes saw the creation of this badge for a child's room, which was created by a student following the format above.   The PLA used by the printer is extremely durable and wearing, meaning that the designs themselves seldom fade or can be broken.  We have been testing this theory with a number of prints to show the evacuation assembly area at school, which when put outside in an exposed area have maintained their shape and form for approaching two years.   This print was 5mm thick, with the lettering and stars an additional 5mm, 60mm high and 140mm across the print time was four and a half hours.

In the final design that we wanted to highlight, a student wanted to create a gift to mark a family members, first Christmas.   Again the basic design format was followed as with other designs in this group.   The design featured no 'rafting' o additional PLA required to complete the project, the student was able to created, design and complete the project themselves while meeting the criteria that was created at the start of the project.   The print measured 140mm across, was 10mm thick (including the lettering in the middle) and featured a whole in the top of the design to attach it to a Christmas Tree.   This took four hours to print on our default settings.