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.