3D Printing - Mathematical Resources

 

This is a companion piece of sorts to a previous post about using the laser cutter to produce ones, tens and hundreds boards for help with place value.

The speed was there however MDF generally is not as durable as PLA and the 3D Printed material can sometimes be better especially if something is intended to be handled extensively.

In this case we were able to locate a download from the Thingiverse website which was titled Place Value Cub Manipulative.  This file contained the designs that we were looking for - a one, tens and hundreds block.   The time to complete the blocks was scaled.

The single blue cube, which represents a base value of one took three minutes to print.   The block of ten took just under thirty minutes and the hundred block (which is not pictured) took three and a half hours.

As this was a pre-made print there was no design necessary but the amount of PLA could then give us a price point for each of these objects.

For the purposes of keeping the price simple we have used a cost of $43.00 for a roll of 1kg of filament.

The single cube (three minutes) uses 0.7g of PLA to complete the print and takes three minutes.   At this price we could produce over 1400 pieces which would give us a price point cost of three cents each.

The ten block needs 5.5g of PLA to complete and takes half an hour.   With a roll of 1kg of material it would be possible to produce 181 from a single roll and the price point for that would be twenty four cents each.

The hundreds board was created using 42.1g of PLA and took three and a half hours to complete.  With the measurements and expectations listed above it would be possible to produce 23 of these from a standard roll of PLA, which would be a price to produce each board of $1.87.

All these figures are listed in New Zealand Dollars.