3D Printed Hair Clip

 

Challenge: To unpack the principles of design behind a simple object (in this case a hair-clip).

Background: Students experimenting with practical task of finding something that they could modify, replicate and adapt.  The students found from  Thingiverse a hair clip that they felt would meet this criteria.

The print was completed in halves.  The students were able to print the piece as shown, without modification.   When the two of them were joined (as the print was completed twice) students realised that they were missing the spring.   This has led to a discussion from the students about the engineering principal of the spring - the crucial piece to join the two 3D Printed pieces together.  

While the instance of the print has yet to be modified by the students the obvious next step for this is to create a personalised element to the design.   Students adapting it to include their name for instance is a very simple step to take for the junior students.   Also given the dimensions and the print time it would be possible to print a large number of these clips (so potentially once the spring is located a business or a Market Day item - potentially with glow-in-the-dark filament.

Resources used to complete this project: Tinkercad App, 3D Printer, PLA, Thingiverse (file) (there are other examples available from this site such as the one shown left which has similar dimensions to this print.

Level of Difficulty: Low.  The student is using a pre-made and designed filed and modifying it.  The intention is to use the file with a small level of modification to lead onto different or more challenging projects.

Size: The print measured 100mm across and was 70mm high.  The back part of our clip is 30mm high.   These dimensions could of course be modified by changing the dimensions of the print via Tinkercad.

Cost/Price: The print used 7.5g of PLA and had 2g of PLA for support for this print.  This was to produce one half of the clip - the pair would obviously need to have two of these printed.   The price point to print a single half of the clip was $0.23c - a full clip would cost $0.46c.

Timeframe: To produce one clip using the P1S Bambu machine the complete print time was thirty six minutes which included the standard six minute warm up time for the machine.

What we would do differently/Next Steps for the students: As described the students need to personalise the design so that they could be seen to modifying it (as opposed to printing something generic which they have just found online) and explore the possibility that this might be a Market Day 2027 option.