3D Printed: Art Stencil - Junior School

 

Challenge: To produce an original 3D Printed art stencil suitable for use in the classroom (for art).

Background: As a teacher I am always looking for inspiration for students which we can take and then apply to design, creation and ultimately 3D Printing and this project worked out extremely well with my classroom of junior (seven and eight year old students).   

It started with the purchase of the stencil shown left that was purchased at a local dollar store.  We then shared the idea with the students in the classroom and posed the question - can they use Tinkercad to create their own version so that we could use it as our own art stencil?

As a reference point from this blog we could also point to a student name stencil that we then used with spray paint from 2024 located here or the stencil made with our school laser cutter which took place last year.   

We looked at the images that were shown on the stencil, talked about what images were available to the students via Tinkercads search interface, and what images the students might be either make using Tinkercads scribble feature or finding .stl images that would be able to used to create the shape.  We then also looked at a recent production from our 2025 School Market Day, a night light where the students had used scribble to create inserts into the side of their nightlight - these were former students now in another classroom.

Step one was to push the template, instructions and details out to the students via Seesaw and allow them to respond and share a snapshot of the design.  This allowed students to create their own ideas but also look at other ideas, responses and creations.

A key question that came up was the thickness of the stencil plate, which was measured to be 1mm and a question of whether this could be reliably printed or would be too thin.   The students also discussed linking and what parts of the prints would 'fall out' during printing - which caused them to develop some ideas and will be a point moving forward.  The students were given thirty minutes to complete their designs at this stage - at which point we held a sharing session with the students to discuss designs like the one that was shown left.

The next step was for the students to refine their designs and look at what other members of classroom had either created as original shapes or located elsewhere.   There was some repetition of ideas.

The last step in this session was for the students to take their designs and experiment with projecting them into a variety of locations using the AR/VR function on Tinkercad and their iPads and the Tinkercad App

In this phase a change of background as simple as the one shown left clearly showed that details of the rocket ship and planet and sun were going to 'fall out' when the printing process was completed.  This caused some revision of the students design.

We have used the AR/VR tool extensively this year as a way for the students to produce something at the end of the production process and have a design that can be applied and shared.  There are many examples of this on this blog and we have also produced an entire slideshow of Tinkercad design ideas that don't have to lead to 3D Printing.   Our school is resourced in an amazing way - we have two hundred students and are very lucky to have three 3D Printers that we can use however we cannot always print a number of large scale projects such as a class set at once due to the time involved.    

In this instance we completed the start of the process of selected prints so that they can be used by the students, handled by the students and shared by the students.  We want the students to be able to shape their designs and examples and see what they can make using the technology to get their ideas thinking.

Level of Difficulty: Medium - the basic shape ideas from Tinkercad are easily available, the selected students who are attempting to use scribble are finding the process more challenging.  Students need to also put a hole right through their design plate.

Size: Most of the students opted for a design that was 150mm by 150mm or 160mm which took up most of the design space area.   We are very lucky to have machines with a large build plate so this could have been attempted with the goal to produce a smaller item but the initial provocation from the dollar store was a A4 sized sheet.  As for the width of the print in the example shown in this post the student opted for a 3mm thick print, which was three times the original this was done to ensure that it was robust enough to survive the printing process, we have already discussed attempting to complete this at 2mm and potentially 1mm using the Bambu H2D Printer.

Cost/Price: We would be looking at the activity using filament that will cost in the region of $1.00 NZD each.  Once the width of the print that is determined to be successful can be determined this was impact the PLA used.

Timeframe: We opted to use the Bambu H2D due to the fine detail that we were expecting with some of the designs and on regular settings this took seventy minutes for the sheet.  We could reduce this time by removing the insides of the print, which is not required to be in place for the stencil.  This then is leading itself already into a discussion with the students about a silhouette and an art activity seperate to the design may then come as a result.

It is conceivable that we will attempt to use the Snapmaker printers to complete this project and compare the results that the two machines are able to produce.   We would anticipate that the project print time with this machine would double per sheet as it stands.

What we would do differently/Next Steps for the students: As noted a lesson (art themed) on silhouette art, further refining the design - for instance in the orange example above the detail such as the inside of the smiley face will not survive the printing process as it is not attached to the base - can the students recognise this? Can they then develop their images to take this into account?

The final stage of course will be applying the process to art, that is the students using the stencil to complete some form of art such as a Mandala design or similar.