Junior School Students Unpacking Commercial Designs

 

Recently a series of fidget like designs have started arriving at our school, which were initially purchased by students from an online commercial seller.

The student concerned purchased the design shown below.   When they had this delivered they thought that they would be able to locate this design online and did so by using Thingiverse.

The student located a basic print, was able to download the .stl code and then supplied it to the teacher for printing.   The student concerned did so without any teacher input, was able to simple hand it to the teacher and then request it would be printed.

The material that was used for the PLA for the design has meant that we have changed focus with our prints.  In the past we have used PLA and included the spray painting as part of the decoration process.  We wanted something that would engage and excite the students so we have opted to order a significant amount of rainbow PLA from our supplier, the first prints of which will be completed later in the week.

The design above was completed in three and half hours, had a small amount of PLA support at the base and the spiral measures 60mm across the base and is 70mm high.  There are no adjustments required for this print as the student concerned simply located a print that was otherwise available and wanted to be able to duplicate it.   By gaining possession of the .stl code the issue is simple whether or not the student wants to resize the design, although changing it would not necessarily by on the agenda given how snug it needs to be to successfully work.

Repairing a commercial Print:

Another favourite that has flooded the classroom at this point is the various animals that have been located.  Initially these came in the forms of animals and dragons that were ordered online.   Some of the commercial prices that were charged for these items were interesting given the context that our students are able to work out the amount of PLA included into a design and therefore work out the profit margin (yes even at Y3/4).

Some of the items that have been located are less than robust, particular in areas such as the linking.  An example is shown left, the lizard here in particular has very minimal linking for each of the legs.

The students solution to this is to locate the original .stl file, which is easily available online.   The student has then loaded the image into Tinkercad and has started the process of strengthening the linking at the points where the print has broken consistently.

Finally we have students who are continuing to use the filters that are available to combine with their iPads to take 3D Designs and images and add layers to them.

A recent example is shown left - the student wanted to locate a copy of a figure from the Monopoly game.   Once this had been located the student downloaded it into Tinkercad and then wanted to start manipulating the image using some basic AR/VR features.  As we have mentioned in this blog students have been using both Tinkercad and PicCollage for this purpose.

In the example shown left the original .stl 3D Print design has been then filtered through distinct filters to increase the appeal and the presentation of it.