3D Printed: Swimming Pool Toys

3D Printed Swimming Toys has come about as a complete accident, however its potentially moved our design into another area that we hadn't considered.

The design and creation of this print took place as part of a series, created by a student, where she was using a template to create unique 3D Printed animals, full details of which can be located here.

During a swimming lesson this week we took one of the prints, in this case the butterfly to the school pool and placed it in the water.  We had already experienced this in our classroom where we realised that due to the print being set on a 20% infill the print would essentially float.

However what we didn't anticipate is that with the articulation designed by the student, the motion of students in the water caused a slight ripple which then caused the articulation to give the illusion that the butterfly was moving its wings.

We still have a couple of weeks of swimming remaining here in New Zealand and we will look to test this further, however potentially it would seem obvious that you could custom make a series of prints that would be used to motivate students by floating on the surface of the water.   In our instance a student who is reluctant to engage when swimming, and not keen to pick up items from a shallow pool was happy to play with the butterfly that was floating on top of the water.