3D Printed Customised Spider - Prototype

Challenge: As part of the art project that students are currently involved in the students are creating an original 3D Print to complement the wire art design.   

Background: This student in question with this design considered himself to be a capable student able to create unique designs from scratch and targeted producing a spider to work in combination with his art.    The student researched potential spiders that would be present on the plant and spent time researching the spider, before making a detailed sketch of its key features and likeness.    The student then switched to Tinkercad for the design of the animal.    The student used the main interface to produce the shapes and legs, as shown left.    One issue was discovered when the PLA support rafting was removed - the thickness of the legs relative to the main print caused on of the legs to snap off - which will need to be addressed by the student moving forward.   

There are a couple of options that we have used when this issue has developed previously, one would obviously to thicken the width and connection points of the legs - the second is to print the legs separately from the main print and attach them separately.

Level of Difficulty: High.   The student has had to conduct research into the insect/animal that they are printing spending time identifying its key features and sketching it in detail.  This detail has then been transferred across to Tinkercad taking into account the design of the arachnid to represent it correctly to scale.    This is going to take several reprints to correct the detail and address issues that have developed as a consequence of the print such as the issue that has been identified with the spiders legs.   This is the kind of project to challenge a confident student rather than to challenge someone just developing their ideas.   Student is eleven years old.

Size: The main body of the arachnid measures 12cm (120mm) long and was 6cm (60mm) across.  In addition to this the print was 50mm high.    This is actually considerably bigger than the actual size of this spider - the student had increased its size considerably and didn't realise that until the print was complete.

Timeframe: Two and a half hours - this is by far the largest print and subsequently had the longest time out of any of the projects in this sequence.  As noted the size of the spider is incorrect, and needs to be downsized meaning the print time will be subsequently reduced.

What we would do differently/next step for students: As noted there are issues with the print that needs to be addressed - not to sound repetitive but the legs and overall size.    The students has clear ideas about how to proceed with the decoration and additional features that might be added to the print.

3D Customised Art Insects

Challenge: For an art design project/sculpture project created by the students to create and 3D design an insect that would work in conjunction with the art display.

Background: Using an Ultimaker 2+ as a printing tool, using Tinkercad as a design tool the students first sketched a diagram of an insect that was related to a plant that they were making that was constructed from wire - for instance a dragonfly with a cactus.    The students in the classroom were confident with using the 3D Printer having completed the introductory tasks that are listed on this blog.   The insects were designed by the ten and eleven year old students using the basic interface design and additional tools.    Students were concentrating on producing a print that was to scale so the print time for all of the insects or animals described here did not exceed twenty minutes and some of the smaller ones were under ten minutes.    

The students brief was to use the 3D Printer to design the insect/animal and additional features of the insects would be added once the creations had been spray painted.    Some of the smaller aspects of the insects are going to be added using additional media, such as wire for the antenna.

Level of Difficulty: Medium there are a variety of designs and creations in this sequence all of which have slightly different aspects.   These designs were all created by students who have used Tinkercad before and were confident in their abilities.   The final design of the plants themselves (such as the cactus shown on the left) is still to be completed so the size o the plants may be altered.   

Size: All of the prints were as close to the possible of the size of the actual insect - so they ranged from a few centimetres to the largest in this sequence which was the dragonfly.   This was 10cm long.  Some of the smaller designs, such as the Ladybugs shown on the left were only two or three centimetres across.

Timeframe: These prints did not take the typical length of time that are listed on this blog, this is primarily because of the scale of them.   By far the longest in the set was the dragonfly which came in at fifty minutes, as mentioned the smaller ones in the series were under ten each.

What we would do differently/Next Steps for the students: Using spray paint to decorate a number of the insects will be key to finishing their details and design.    Once a base coat has been applied additional details can be added to finish the designs.  The students also have been challenged to produce the insects to scale to complete the art design so there is potential to adjust some of the prints - given the length of time for each one and the PLA involved this is not a particularly major deal.