3D Printed Project: Junior Evolution of Progressions

 

In March of this year we started the process of preparing for Auroa Primary School  Market Day 2025 with the concepts of innovation, personalisation and creation coming to the fore.   In this instance one of the groups decided to work on bath toys.

They used Tinkercad to create independent designs and then created a variety of tests for the prototypes to ensure that they met the brief and were correct.   You can follow the early progress and ideas formation by clicking on this link - or using the 'search' option on the right hand side and using the keyword 'Octopus'.

While we knew the floating aspect of the design would work the students wanted to explore balance and stability.  This has come up in the past with our work on 3D Printed boats and other objects - you can read details of the post about this challenge here.

This final design shown left met many of the design briefs - and students used it in their AR/VR focus and creation for the business.   However the base of the designs created some challenges for the students.   They attempted to water proof the designs using spray and hot glue gun and tried to consider design solutions while maintaining the shape.  The design in this format 90mm across at the base, 90mm high at the top of the hat.   Essentially in this format the print was either two or four hours depending on the machined.    

A variety of shapes this size were used - and while they met the floating brief - the designs were not waterproof.   Finally as noted with the boat design the base of the design needed to be expanded to ensure that the print didn't tip as soon as it was placed in water.  Initially the students added several elements to the shapes, monocles, ribbons, bowties - however when discussed a young child potentially could break some of these elements off, so as the designs were refined a lot of these elements were removed.   

The solution that the students came to was to look at the PLA that was used for printing.   Interesting the students were able to identify that the basic colours appeared to seal better at the base of the design than colours such as the silk (multi-coloured).   Examples such as the one show left were shown to remain buoyant after days of testing although they were somewhat unbalanced.

The design shown left took forty minutes to print using the Snapmaker machines and measured 30mm across at the base and was 25mm high.   The design was put in water as noted - and while it did not sit perfectly the students felt it passed the purpose test as a working bath toy.

However students felt while it was adequate they still felt that it lacked the dynamic impact of some of the elements that they had seen in flexi-animals and wanted to look at some way to increase the size of or the details around the tentacles.     This Octopus which we first attempted in 2022 was something of the inspiration - and while we have had students working on flexi aspect of the design these students have not, and the timeframe for the completion of the designs meant that feasibly the skill would take longer than is practical.

The solution that the students came up with was to redesign the Octopus placing the emphasis on the tentacles and producing a more clearly flat design.   They wanted to locate a design that already featured the tentacles and use their knowledge that they had developed to work on the head of the octopus and included in that personalisation for the customers who had indicated .

This meant that they moved in the direction of a more standard design.  This was highlight by various designs that had linking completed and were flexi animals.  This is something that we have spent considerable time on in the past developing and exploring ideas such as this.   

In this example shown left the students attempted to redesign the animal with the emphasis now (clearly) shown to be on the tentacles.  In this first attempt a prior example was used and the student made a basic attempt to alter the dimensions of the print.  This is the black design shown above.

This was not successful as the print did not have the depth to allow the linking to work successfully.   This print originally took forty five minutes.  A revised print took one and a half hours.  The revised version is shown left which included raised 10mm tentacles which when removed from the plate flowed and showed movement when placed in water.   The students determined that with the action that they would expect to see in the form of movement in the bath that the 'swimming' motion would appear with the tentacles of the octopus moving - the head or body creating the buoyancy.

The final step for the students now that the finished design has been determined is to include the personalisation and the features that the students previously experienced with the early designs.   

Ideally the students will also experiment with and develop their design skills with the linking, time permitting.    Finally to note the students involved in this process are Y3 and Y4 students from our school.  This means that the students involved are seven and eight years old who have been using Tinkercad for either one or two years in the classroom.