3D Printed Trophy: Junior Exemplar

Challenge: To produce a 3D Printed trophy suitable for end of year prize giving. 

Background: This project has been detailed in three previous posts on this blog and has now been updated as it has reached its finishing stage.  The challenge came originally from the school principal in a whole class AR/VR challenge which is listed here.

It continued with a development of the first physical versions of this print which were detailed here.  As this was something that we were looking for a very refined print, it was adjusted several times and a second major reshaping took place and was posted about. on the blog here.

These refinements have allowed significant progress and contributed towards a more polished finished to this print.

The completion of the process took a bit of a back seat due to the 2025 School Market Day however since that event has now been resolved it has allowed us to return to projects that were in the works prior to that.

The final two versions of the print are shown left.  The first (on the far left) was used several times before a final design decision was made to increase the size of the print so that the 'plate' piece at the front could hold more information.   In addition to this we printed it using a 'marble PLA' to give the design the look of a stone type trophy.   The plate at the front is interchangeable, being replaced and colour matched depending on the award that needs to be given.  The entire project has been created and actioned by a eight year old student using Tinkercad and their iPad to design and create and manipulate the details.

Level of Difficulty: High - this design has seen a lot of revision and a lot of work and the effort that the student has put in is not for the faint hearted.   While they are a Y4 (eight) year old student they have been using Tinkercad for two years and produced a number of detailed designs.   There has been several hours work put into this design to get it to this stage.

Size: The final design dimensions are the rectangle at the front is 95mm across is 30mm high and is 35mm deep.  There is a distinct edging for the inside plaque to be put which is 5mm around the inside of this.   So the insert will need to be 90mm by 25mm and 5mm or so wide.

The base of the main design is 130mm across and is 120mm high.  The main disc is 10mm wide as it the bordering pieces.

While slightly smaller versions have been created this was intended to have the balance between this and the smaller designs.

Cost/Price: Based around the Bambu Studio Lab suggestions this print will be using 105g of PLA to complete the print - this would mean that a regular 1kg roll of filament would be able to produce just less than ten prints - and that each one would come in at around $3.00 NZD to produce.

Timeframe: Using the Bambu H2D the print as a run time of just over four hours.  We would not consider using the Snapmaker machines for this print as there is considerable details in the lettering and we would be expecting a print completion time of double.

What we would do different/Next steps for the students: We would consider this project now complete as the original brief has been met.   This is not intended to be a mass produced item (or if it was it would need to be scaled down) the idea being to gift one to students for prize giving for the school.