3D Designed Stationary Holder/Pencil Sharpner

Challenge: For a student who is confident in 3D Printing to design something that has a purpose, was original and also personalised.

Background: This student is a second year junior student who has been in the classroom for sometime.  She is confident in using Tinkercad with her designs and was challenged to design something with a purpose, as per the brief.   While she wanted something to house stationary for her work in the classroom - however she made the decision to include the ability to have a pencil sharpener included with the design.   In the photograph of the finished print (shown left) the indentation is directly below the name of the student.  This has been introduced into the base of the design.    The design is shown prior to spray painting and the name should be highlighted more at this point.

The photograph shown left is the AR/VR version of Tinkercad. This student created this design in Tinkercad first, and then placed it on a desk in a typical situation that it would be used in, to see how it would look.   Viewing the design in this concept you can clearly see the parts of the design which are not visible in the first photograph.   This allowed the student to get the dimensions and design features correct to ensure that the print was likely to be completed.

We have previously been able to identify problems with designs that can be detected prior to printing to ensure that the printing is more successful.

This is the completed print, with a photograph of the print taken with an iPad.   The print has then been put through the PicCollage App using the 'Magic Camera' option.   The default setting for this option is the 'watermark' option which can be shown as an example on the left, this is the completed print put through the filter.

Level of Difficulty: Medium this print has several elements to it and was worked on independently by a student who is a Y4 student.   The print was successful in this regard.

Size: The print measured 140mm across and was 140mm deep, this gave the print considerable stability.   The print had a height of 120mm.    The width of the rim was 20mm at the front and was 5mm at the back.  This was something that the student had deliberately done as the front part of the design is intended to house a pencil sharpener.  If the design was 5mm all the way around this last part of the design would not be possible.

Timeframe: 28 Hours.  This was a considerable length of time for this project however it was intended to be a statement piece that would be used for considerable time moving forward - examples such as these have been created and existing and still in use at our school several years after they have initially been created.   Given the considerations (including the use of the pencil sharpener) these dimensions and the subsequent print times would be expected.

What we would do differently/next step for students: The student is looking for the decoration options for this project to complete it.   The student will focus on the final decorations, spray painting and the attaching of the pencil sharpener and it operating.