3D Printed Super Sized Minecraft Cow

 

Challenge: For eight year old students to produce a unique, original Minecraft themed print using Tinkercad as the design tool.  Criteria: Print must be original and also have a purpose.

Background: Much like last weeks Axolotl which had been completed and organised for storage, this Minecraft cow originally featured as a AR/VR post on this blog which you can view by clicking on the link here. 

The print was deliberately designed to be oversized and we were interested in pushing the limits of the Bambu H2D, as shown in the dimensions below.

The link between Minecraft and Tinkercad has been documented numerous times by the students at our school as the blocks of Minecraft can be replicated directly or indirectly via Tinkercad.   You can view examples of this by clicking on the link here.

Level of Difficulty: Medium/High - this was not for the feint hearted and involved two students one from cohort one and one from cohort two producing a joint effort to complete this print.  Given the scale of the print we would not be producing it unless we were happy that it ticked off a number of criteria.

Size: This was one of the largest prints that we had completed in some time.  The print had a height of 170mm and was 180mm long.   The main body of the cow was 90mm across, 130mm wide and 60mm high.  Each of the four legs are 40mm by 40mm and 120mm high.

Cost/Price: The print used 382g of filament to produce, including the rafting or waste plastic.  This had a price point in its current format of $9.55 to produce.   With this in mind this is the biggest in the series, by some distance of the prints that we are intending to turn from AR/VR designs into physical projects and prints.  With PLA being generally ordered in 1kg spools obviously three of these would be required for each roll.

Timeframe: Nine and a half hours.   As we stated this is one of the longest prints that we have produced in the classroom this year.   A reminder that as we are using the Bambu H2D the speed of machine is roughly twice as quick as that of a regular Snapmaker, hence our reluctance to undertake to print this sort of project on that machine.   As we have stated during the year it is our intention to complete every print this calendar year from a single machine.

What we would do differently/Next steps for the students: It should be evident from the dimensions of this print and the details of it that we are not intending to complete something of this scale to any great level based on the cost and the amount of filament used.   The students could have increased the size of the storage area on the back of the cow and ideally perhaps added some small details to the design.  They are intended to have adults spray paint the print to complete the colour matching for the design.