Refining and Reworking Basic Prints: Junior School

 

We have written at length with some of the processes and ideas that students start with when engaging in the 3D Printing and design process for the first time.

As we have previously detailed with projects on this blog over several years  - a simple personalised print is usually created quickly by students, such as a typical example shown left.   

One of the challenges for students is how to refine and improve on an original basic design.  We are encouraging our students to refine and detail the prints - as we have been recently documenting.  In the original Harry design shown here was a basic rectangle shape, with the addition of a hole and a name badge.   The print measured 120mm across was 80mm high and was 5mm wide.  Two hour print.

An example of having one of the students remaking this (a reminder that our students in this current class are junior students, Y3 which in this case makes them seven years old).  

In the example shown left the student wanted to take the design and make some changes, the idea that he came up with was to remove sections of the print to give the impression that bites had been taken out of it.  He started with a basic design (shown below) and then in the same design printed again this time with the sections of the print removed.   The dimensions for the print remained the same as the 'Harry' example however the total print time was reduced as the missing sections of the print, where the bite sections were taken from, did not require to be printed.   The bite in the name plate served the purpose of the hole.

In the example shown left, is the locket design.   Basic versions of these have just the name of the students, a basic shape, such as the heart shown left and a way to attach it to the design.  This design also has three other cartoon figures above the name and below it.    

These are considerably easy to design by students with limited experience, in this case a Y3 student who has no previously experience in using Tinkercad or 3D Printing.  The print measures 80mm high was 60mm across and was 5mm thick.   

A challenge for the student to take this design and upscale it resulted in the following print that was made by a high functioning junior school student.   The design has a number of aspects to it.

The student choose to combine three different hearts into the one shape.   In each aspect of the design the student featured part of their name and also their signature.   The print was just under two hours, which was considerably longer than the initial design, which was forty five minutes.

The reimagined design was nearly half as large again however this was because the print had three elements to it, as opposed to the single design that was first.

The student is also going to design a pair of earrings that will work in conjunction with the designs shown above.  The student is going to experiment with the location of the hole to ensure that the earrings are balanced and hang correctly.