Laser Cut Tree - 3D Printed Additions

 

3D Printed Additions to Laser Cut Tree

We detailed on a previous post about using the school laser cutter to produce a range of Christmas Trees with a short space of time for decoration.   Once this was completed the next question was what can we add? What could we make that would work in conjunction with this?

An example is shown left.   The original design is the large Christmas Tree featured on this blog here.  There is a star which was designed very quickly independently by a Y3 student.   The student used a basic design template to produce a star, inserted a letter into the base of the star and inserted a line into the middle so that it could sit on the tree.  None of these elements took more than one minute to produce.

The student is now looking towards the next steps - what else can the students design using Tinkercad to add to the tree.  In the case of the star the entire print was fifteen minutes to print.

The student wanted to look at decoration ideas - one of the ideas was to dye the MDF green and then to use a small set of battery powered set of Christmas lights to illuminate the tree (this would also work if the student had a set of three trees that were in a row.

Christmas Decorations 2024: Ten Years of Student Projects

 

3D Printed Christmas Tree - Junior Development and Evolution

 

Challenge: For a novice designer to be able to successfully produce a Christmas Tree.

Background: We have mentioned this challenge for students in the past, detailing the process by which they select a design and refine and develop it further.

The process shown left started with the smallest design.  It was a basic tree with small decoration.  The initial tree took only thirty minutes to print and measured just over 50mm.   The design base was not centred correctly and there was no option to hand the tree.  Not satisfied with the size of the design the student was able to simple reshape the design and doubled the size.

This increased the printing time significantly which then came in at two hours.   The size of print now measured 130mm from the base to the top, the student also centred the base again and added several other designs to the shape.

The student responsible for this is seven years old.  He is using Tinkercad for the first time this year in the classroom.

The issue of hanging of the tree was not possible so the student wanted to ensure this was possible.  As shown left in the screenshot from the Tinkercad design page with the inserting of a tube at the top to allow the print to be completed with an obvious place to tie.

The student also further attempted to balance the base of the tree.  The concept of the base being wider or larger was not something that he was able to consider.

The print time for this is two and a half hours.   This design was in similar to other with this set of projects and is being included in the slideshow that features ten years of Christmas Themed designs.  You can click on the link here and please feel free to share it with as many others as possible.