3D Printed Junior 'Cyclops' Challenge

Challenge: To use a large single eye in conjunction with a print design (aka the cyclops challenge).

Background: We are nearly three quarters of the year through the school year in New Zealand and the students have been using Tinkercad as a design tool for nearly all of this time (as we started projects in the first week) there is also a number of students who were in the classroom last year with nearly two years design experience.   As a teacher I tend to be looking for examples and ideas that I can present to the students, the classroom and challenge them to come up with ideas and creations with a loose direction.

This project idea came from something that developed with a previous print project on this blog.    We were using a 'cat' theme for our literacy tasks and so a natural fit was 3D design - the students finished several of these designs with stick on eyes - as can be seen in these posts on this blog.    While we now have the potential to use the Bambu H2D to change filaments mid print and produce a eyeball we also wanted to look at a physical 'eye' as a starting point for a design.

By purchasing a packet of large oversized eyes from a local craft shop, for a nominal fee, it was presented to the students with the challenge of producing something based on the design however the students could only have one eye and the print had to have a purpose to it.    The students brainstormed ideas and looked into projects that had worked previously from storage to pencil toppers.    The limit to the eyes created a 'cyclops' aspect to the challenge and students worked in monster designs as part of it.   As shown left and above the student used the Tinkercad main interface to design oversized teeth and gums, ears and a socket for the eye.

The students were collectively creating as so were able to bounce ideas off each other they also used AR/VR to project their designs into different locations to look at their suitability for design and to consider aspects of their creations.   In the example shown below the student duplicated his original design.

This allowed him to develop two seperate prints for his project, a pencil holder on the left, which he then inverted and turned into a pencil topper, reduced the size and put a hole in the bottom so essentially turned one project into two.   

Level of Difficulty: Low - this is essentially a task where the open aspect of it allows students to create something with an open scale and design features (for instance it would have been more challenging to produce a realistic cat.

Size: This print was initially created to be 70mm across and was 60mm high.   The print was designed originally as a prototype and to realistically store pencils would need to be of a larger scale, with greater ability to hold stationary.   The pencil topper needed to the other direction as it couldn't be too big as it would upset the ability to write realistically with a pencil.

Timeframe: Just over two hours.  This was completed on the Snapmaker printer - if it had been completed on the Bambu we would have expected this to be half the time, something in the region of one hour.

What we would do differently/next steps for the students: As noted there is some redesign that is required when the student decides on the direction that they want to go on, either increasing the storage or reducing the storage depending on the purpose.   The design is robust, comical and the student has the balance right between the task and producing something that has appeal.   The other thing to keep in mind is that the student who is responsible for this design is seven years old, although they have shown an aptitude for creation and design.