3D Printed Junior School Progressions Part Two

Challenge: For novice and junior (seven year old) students to show progression with designs

Background: As detailed on this blog we have students who are junior in our school system as young as seven years old.  One of the perceptions was that designing using CAD software might be somewhat beyond them, however as has been stated many times over the past two years this is simply not the case.  The students have shown time and time again they they have the concepts and ability to do exactly this.   Using Tinkercad as a design tool  to either design from scratch or taking common designs from the main interface to then take them and personalise and add details to them.   At a basic level for some of the students who are Y3, moving into the classroom for the first time to use the designs that can be created by a single click as a starting point.   The designs shown above left are simple forty minute prints.  Built into the design is the opening and closing mechanism.

The design left came from these early sessions and then the student involved wanted to look at expanding the design and including additional elements in the design.  Clearly this was destined for another family member, and the student wanted to experiment by adding something extra.  Similar to how she was able to select the locket design, she then added the text, added a star and a heart to complete the design.   Once the student had combined all of these elements she made the decision to upscale the design from the two different versions of the same print shown above.  In the above designs each was a forty minute print.   By upscaling the design below, and adding the elements the student design was increased to one that had a two hour print time.

One lesson the student learned from the project was the need to enlarge both portions of the design.  She upscaled the base, which contained the name, but did not do likewise with the top.  This meant that the design was lop sided and needed further adjustment but this is excellent practical experience for the student at a small scale.

The student working on the unique junior dragon as detailed previously on this blog has continued to refine her design.  This is an example of a more challenging project, but again the student involved is a junior, that is a student who is eight years old.  It is her second year completing CAD design projects having been creative in her previous year this project is designed to push her skills.  Each version of this dragon is taking about an hour to print, the initial version, shown left with the adaptation is taking about an hour to print.    

As you can see the student has opted to significantly shift the location of the wings, incorporate spikes into the design.   The student has been encouraged to continue to do so - the design has elements that are evolving and she has been encouraged to look at art and creations in literature to add elements and further parts to the design.  The next stage is the student reshaping and redesigning the head and in particular the mouth area, she is being encouraged to think about the length of the head and sculpting and shaping the teeth, which while it is challenging it is encouraging to see the motivation and the effort that she is putting in to completing this.