3D Printed: Projects to create interest

 

We have mentioned in the past about prints that we produce that are generated from online sites - and while we do not print them in significant numbers we do so on occasion either for a specific purpose or to create a thinking point for students.

Two recent examples are for a community event where the local farming group are having an event.  We have previously produced table centre pieces for a local surf club dinner in February 2023 in a post where you can see the details here.

In this example shown with the cow we located a print that had been made available online via the Thingiverse site.   This is one of a number of online sites that have a huge volume of files, projects and options available, some of which in the past we have modified for our own students projects - such as this example when a coaster was inverted to provide the backing image for an iPad stand that was used in our 2025 School Market Day.

As can be seen from the illustration the cow itself has considerable detail.   For the dinner we are intended to create the point of interest by printing a range of the cows in different colours that would make them stand out, hence the 'glass orange' shown in the photo but we will be producing a group of fifteen or so in non traditional colours.

Each of the prints is significant.   It measures 200mm across and stands 150mm high.   The print uses 130g of filament to complete, costs $3.23 and takes four hours and ten minutes to complete.   There was a degree of rafting or waste plastic underneath the base of the cow but it was not significant.   While the cost of the production of these animals is significant is the schools intention to see it as a donation and also potentially use these animals as part of a class play set following the event for our junior class of students as farming based activities can be quite popular.

Likewise the spider (shown left) has come out of the students in the classroom and one in particular has a specific interest in spiders.   We were able to produce this spider as a reward for the student to complete their work.   It is fairly significant in that it measures 160mm long and is 130mm wide.   The print uses 65g of PLA filament to complete and cost $1.50 to produce.   It has a print time to complete of three hours and ten minutes.

This is going to be an item that is printed in limited amounts, and we would ask students who wanted something like this 'what would you add to change it or what would be the purpose of the print - if they could demonstrate an idea to modify or adapt this print then it would meet some basic criteria but as it stands this will very much remain a limited design.