3D Printed Mt Taranaki

This is the view from outside our school - just before the start of the 2026 school year.

Mt Taranaki is in the picture which is an iconic and hugely significant local dominating feature.  It is also a prominent part of our Mihi Whakatu (greeting) that our students need to be able to identify and recite for a foundational part of our school.

We wanted to try and think of other ways to show and connect to the mountain for our students.   We were able to locate a .stl file of the mountain and print it out by sourcing it via Thingiverse.  This is one of several sites that has a considerable number of freely available files in a range of topics.   We wanted to locate the .stl file as this is the primary way to import files into Tinkercad.  By having the print in Tinkercad we can do several tasks.

Firstly it allows the students to experience and hold a physical topographical map of the mountain and point out areas of significance.   In the case of the mountain we have the main peak and another peak that is part of the mountain but on our side.

We also of course now that we have the .stl file have the ability to use the Tinkercad App and AR/VR the mountain into different locations around the school and to look at it in terms of turning it into some kind of art project.

Finally again as we've been doing recently we used the glow-in-the-dark filament to complete the project.

The print was completed using the Bambu H2D - it took two hours to complete, used 47g of filament according to Bambu Studios used filament that was worth $1.20.