Principal's Student Challenge: Stencil

 

Challenge: Principal has challenged students to create a useable stencil for him to work in conjunction with his notebook.

Background: Last year our Principal challenged the students from our classroom to create a unique trophy that could be awarded at school as part of our prize-giving.  You can follow the progress of the project when it started here see it develop further here and finally look at the finished product here.   Since we started this year working on our original stencils the Principal saw some of the students early examples which alerted him to problem that he was wanted to solve - to have a unique stencil for his 'Principals Notebook' (with the example shown left).   He met with a small group of students personally, supplied the design and explained his requirements.

He also previously challenged students to create an official school paperclip which you can see us blogging about in August from last year by clicking on the link here

It took some of the students (who again we would like to point out are seven and eight years old) under ten minutes for the first design to be completed.   This design was important as it allowed us to look at the students understanding of the task - what had they determined from their instructions, and what adjustments did they need to make.    We also discovered something more with Tinkercad - that you can indeed design something that is bigger than the plate and still export it as an .stl file - and then subsequently print it.

We decided to make this a class challenge - when we were going to award a reward for the project that the Principal would identify as being the one that best followed his instructions and created a brief.  As this was the case we made sure that the students created an AR/VR version of their design once it had been completed and then using the Tinkercad App projected it virtually into the classroom to allow students to check the design for flaws or faults.   In the example shown left the student needs to make some adjustments to the design - hence the important of being able to design and create, but in this case not necessarily have to 3D Print.   In 2025 we developed a slideshow of examples of activities that met this brief - you can click on the link to view the post about the slideshow here.

We printed the first examples shown left - and then allowed the Principal to have a follow up meeting with the students to give them feedback to refine their design.   We already knew from the stencil printing that we would be looking at a print time somewhere in the region of thirty minutes to an hour and this proved to be the case.   

Again the feedback from someone not involved in the production with the students has been invaluable to get them to understand the concept of feedback and refine their designs.   Again while there is no intention for repetition but the stencils that the students have been producing has led directly to this spin off and the 1mm width of the design has meant the print time is extremely reasonable.

Since we have started to complete this it has then come to the teachers attention that producing something similar to this stencil but using it as a whiteboard border or a organiser for the classroom would potentially be a practical and a really great use of the 3D Printer - and then using magnets etc to attach it to the whiteboard should work really well.

The final stage of the process will be the feedback - when the Principal will then be selecting the best virtual versions which will then progress through to the printing process.   The details that are contained below are the first prototype to give an explanation of what is likely to be required for the finished product (which when completed this week we will publish).

Level of Difficulty: Medium.   Success of this process will require the students to respond to specific dimensions and directions from the Principal of the School to ensure their designs are perfect to complete the brief.

Size:    The top design measures 250mm by 170mm and the second design is slightly smaller measuring 190mm by 170mm.  In both cases as we have been completing with our stencil work the width of the print is 1nn.

Cost/Price: The larger print used 50g of PLA the smaller slightly less in 40g.    The cost for the larger print according to the Bambu Lab software was $1.20 and $1.00 respectively.   

Timeframe: The larger print took one hour and ten minutes and the smaller print took just under one hour.

What we do differently/Next Steps for the Students: Feedback and more feedback from the Principal and the task is completed.   This will depend on the students following the feedback and communicating with the Principal until it is successful.