3D Printing with Juniors - Minimum PLA and Time

Challenge: To produce a class set of 3D Prints minimising the print time and the amount of PLA (plastic) that is being used for the print.

Background: We have just restarted the school term in New Zealand as we have mentioned on this blog this year the classroom is consisting of junior students who are Y3/4 which makes them seven and eight years old.   They are using Tinkercad to design projects which are then printed using Snapmaker.   The students are currently going through a series of design challenges, the intention is that the students will use the machines to create and print their designs.   

This design challenge idea came from one of the sessions where a student created a design and it was therefore identified as a task that would suit the whole class.   We are extremely lucky to have three Snapmaker machines available school wide, which our class is able to use - and given the time with the task it was not unreasonable to expect that by running all of the machines at once that three or four days would be possible to complete a class set.

Size: The prints vary depending on the number of letters in the students name.   We also allowed students to choose their own font option from the variety that are available on the Tinkercad interface.  In general the size of the prints was similar 70mm across and 20mm-30mm long and 10mm thick.   

Timeframe: As with the size with the intention being the creation of a class set of these projects one of the main aspects of them is the manageable ability to produce a class set of several days.   All of the prints in this class set have individually taken between forty minutes and an hour to complete.   If you compare this to some of the other options with the badges this version is considerably quicker but just as effective.

Level of Difficulty: Low - this print and design features two basic concepts the lettering, which is available from the main interface, a ring to complete the linking and nothing additional is required.   The only issue that needed to be consistently addressed with this design was lettering that was not linked to the original print. this was achieved by stretching out any of the letter that was not linked or touched and creating a linked print that had no edges.

Next Steps for the Students/What we would do differently: Given the scale of this project and what we wanted to achieve there are minimal changes that need to be made.