3D Printed Junior Progression: Jewellery

 

Background and Details: Market Day 2025 Project

It started with a brainstorming session for students for this years 2025 School Market Day which has the themes running through it of personalisation and innovation.

As we have students who have proven to be adept and enthusiastic 3D Printers we researched different ideas related to this.   One group of students found the example shown left, which they felt would be in their skill range, and would be feasible to produce using our Schools 3D Snapmakers via Tinkercad.

However when tasked with consider the personalisation thats where the students then developed the idea further.

By using the main Tinkercad interface there is a cube shape available as one of the major design shapes.,  Combining this with the adding of text easily allowed the students to insert their names onto each of the blocks to form a series.     This allowed the clear personalisation that is one of the goals.

The next step was to get the students to consider how they could expand on this and push their designs further.   They had the ability to create something detailed and effective by using the 'scribble' icon that we have used constantly in the classroom, this allowed the students to create images that in turn could then be converted in printable images that could be inserted onto the blocks.   

The combination of both allowed the creation of beads that were personalised with the students name and then interspaced with the beads that had the illustrations on them.

The size of the beads was relatively small, being essentially 1.5cm cubes so that the print time for each one was approximately 15 minutes.   

Further experimenting will be completed with these designs, as they currently can be made out but require additional refinement to ensure that they have clarity as is the case at times with the details in 3D printing we typically use the default setting of 'fast' to ensure that the task can be completed and at times the accuracy for the prints may not be there.   

The practicality is that we typically share the machines with other students and classrooms and we need to consider that in both the size and the frequency of our printing.

We also have the opportunity to look at using filament that is different in its composition, the students have expressed a desire to work with different colour combinations including metallic and rainbow prints.   This will be further expanded on in upcoming prints and projects as we approach Market Day,