Original Articulated Animal Design: Butterfly

 Now that we have completed work on the school market day the students are looking at addressing projects from prior to this timeframe that require completion.   As noted the majority of the prints of animals for our market day were the articulated animals located on Thingiverse.    While these were a good starting point we wanted to look at developing our own prints.

As featured here on the site we have a number of students working on developing original prints, which was started by the kiwi.   In the same group was the butterfly.   This was attempted to be printed previously although we had a faulty part on the machine (since replaced) which has allowed the following to be completed.

The process for the design of the butterfly involved brainstorming the idea, the students had identified how to complete the linking via a tutorial video on Youtube.    The design for the butterfly was sourced online.

The print measured 120mm across and was 90mm high at the tip of the wings and 60mm high at the top of the abdomen.   The print was 10mm high and took three hours to print.   The linking was quite loose however it was effective and worked extremely well.  The student used the component stages and then produced the final print in Tinkercad before it was converted using the Snapmaker Luban software before being print.

Tinkercad as a design program for our students works extremely well.  We have used it for a number of years at our 1:1 iPad School.  The students predominantly use Apple Laptops to create the prints although we have some students who use iPads to create the design.   As a teacher I also think that Tinkercad has excellent Educator/Teacher interface and the ability to host a classroom in a easy and adaptable manner.  The classrooms at school have school accounts created and linked to them and the students are able to design and create and then easily share and modify their designs.

The student as noted in this case has been able to design the butterfly essentially from scratch and the student researched and identified the linking via youtube - and thus was able to present to the teacher the final print which was then able to be directly printed without any modification.    This student has shown creativity and invention with her work and had two years experience using Tinkercad and the Ultimaker printers that were previously in the classroom.   

Snapmaker as a printer also has software that is available that works in conjunction with the printer/Tinkercad to produce the final results.  Again the software associated with this is exceptional, easy to manipulate and develop and produces excellent result.

Key to the final product, and we have mentioned this before, is that there is literally zero waste that is produced as a result of the printing - and the consistency with the print job is fantastic.   The linking/print comes out as a single piece already linked and completed.   This allows the students to produce an eye catching and creative design finished to an extremely high standard.   This is an exceptional project and exceptional example of student creativity.