3D Printed Bed Exemplar

 

Challenge: Produce a unique, interesting and creative original piece of furniture suitable for a dolls house.

Background: It was never supposed to be as successful as it has been, in terms of output and also the creativity and the engagement with the students but as we are reflecting on the task and winding down the project it has been one of the most significant worthwhile projects that our students have managed to utilise the 3D printers and Tinkercad for.

The progression the knowledge and the development of the students work has shown clear evidence that we have been able to document as designs have been improved discussed and prototyped.

The bed shown left has come from a student who has made several items of design stand out for the project - including putting a detail on the headboard that stood out.     This was created using the basic design template, however its placement shows excellent thinking outside of the box and creativity.

 The design is not perfect and the student is going to address a couple of issues - as shown in the photograph left one of the duplicated blocks for the base is off centre.   The student missed this during creation and it wasn't picked up during testing of durability or AR/VR previewing (which it really should have!).  The student who created this is a student who has developed his skills over the last two years of using Tinkercad in the classroom and is eight years old.  As with nearly all the designs featuring in the blog from the classroom the teacher has not had any input into this design - the student has manipulated the design and created the project.   The final stage in the process is the testing.

Next week we are creating a table in the junior (five year old) classroom for the students to look at the designs and creations and have some creative play with them, we want to have our students have an opportunity to view them, to see them being used and then to 

Size:   The print measures 80mm wide is 95mm deep and is 10mm wide at the base.   The four blocks to raise the bed are 20mm high cylinders.   The headboard that contains the penguin is a further 50mm by 80mm being 5mm thick, which needs to be tested to ensure it can survive being dropped etc).   This is to work in conjunction with the 'lego esq' figure that we have been using, already the student has been asked to 'barbie' size the design up, which the student is happy to do as it simply a matter of rescaling the design in Tinkercad which can be completed with a single click.

Timeframe: Eight hours on the standard default setting.   In this instance the issue to deal with was the rafting that was produced underneath the base of the design which was then subsequently removed - but again as we have stated several times we would anticipate this toys would potentially be in use everyday for years (as evidence by some of our long term prints) and we need them to be as strong as possible, printing them separately and then re-gluing them in our experience weakens the structure.

What we would do differently/Next steps for the students:  We want to wind up the project and move into the focus on the school market day so this is the near completion of the project.  As mentioned the feet of the bed requires adjustment and the juniors need to be able to be let loose with the furniture to test it to see if anything unexpected happens.