3D Printed Award

 

Challenge: For a student to design something, and modify and print it during their first week of school.

Background; This is a basic foundation task to have a new student excited and involved in the process of 3D Printing.   In this case the student found a design that they wanted to print (the trophy) and then wanted to make an iPad stand which they wanted to personalise by introducing the persons name on the reverse side.

The student working on this task joined the classroom this week, had another student acting as someone to mentor them and this is their first attempts at 3D Printing.

Resources Used: iPad, Tinkercad App, Bambu P1S Printer, regular PLA.    

Level of Difficulty: Low - this is an introductory task (for an eight year old) where the intention is for them to be successful with the process, the design and the outcome.  It is something that should be considered a basic fundamental task.

Size: The trophy measures 50mm across and is 60mm high.  The stand measures 80mm across was 60mm long and was 70mm high.

Cost/Price: The stand used 44g of PLA and the trophy used 14g of PLA to complete.  The price to print both of these items was a combined $1.10c.

Timeframe: Two print the two items side by side took ninety minutes with the standard (default) settings.

What we would do differently/Next steps for the students: The idea behind something like this is to get the student learning the concept, ideas and thinking about what else or where to next.  In the initial design process the student wanted to make an iPad stand however in this instance the stand is too small - it makes a excellent phone stand but to convert it would require resizing and developing.   There was a star that the student wanted to have on the stand under the name, but they didn't attach it to the base and it floated as a result.   This would be something that could be addressed with a revision.

School Holiday Challenge: Earrings 2026 Edition

 

Challenge: For students to use their iPad, Tinkercad (app or web browser) and a 3D Printer to produce an original pair of earrings.

Background: Due to the nature of the design, the simplicity that it is possible to complete the task with and also the printing time - this has evolved into a standard creation, production and printing task for the students.

As the term was coming to the end we used this as a challenge where we spoke to the students - we also wanted to make it clear to the students that if they continue to design, create and make in the School Holidays here in New Zealand we will be able to print their designs during the break so they will be ready for their collection after the break.

In this instance having being regularly posting on this site for many years this is one of the tasks that we have a wealth of examples from - from one off basic designs to students who have created entire micro-businesses with the concept and used it for previous school Market Days.   You can view the links to all of these posts on this blog or use the search bar top right and use the term 'earrings' to see pages and pages of potential examples.   You can click on this link to the 2023 project which started as a design task  and then evolved into this 2023 Market Day business.

We also had students switch to the laser cutter in 2024 or you can view the Pac-Man super slim examples from 2021 by clicking on this link here.  This summary slideshow created in 2025 contains all of the steps from start to finish in the process - aimed very much at a teacher carrying this out as an activity with an entire classroom.

Size: As shown from the design plate on Tinkercad is 80mm long and 30mm wide the print are also 10mm wide.

Cost/Price: Using the Bambu Lab studio software we are able to determine that to print both of the pair would take 14g and has a price point of $0.33.

Timeframe: To print both of these it took twenty three minutes to complete using the Bambu H2D.  This task would be ideal to print using a slower printer or a printer that was not able to create the detail that more complicated prints require.

What we would do differently/Next steps for the student: This is a very basic introductory task that the students in the classroom could complete easily and we have had student complete some basic designs after being shown the app and how to create basic designs.   This task also leads to more complicated designs from the students.    This is designed for the students to be successful in a short space of time.

We have a slideshow as described - on our Facebook Page we have included a copy of the slideshow as a downloadable slideshow in powerpoint format.  You can click on the link to that here.

3D Printing Week One in the Classroom

What happened in Week One of Auroa Primary School for 2026 in regards to Digital Design:

To complete work in the first week of school students used their iPads and accessed the Tinkercad website to log into their online design accounts, used the Tinkercad software and created their first designs.

Currently we have not used the Tinkercad app or completed any AR/VR work.

Cohort One: This is the new group of students to the classroom who have had no previous experience with using Tinkercad. They are eight year olds who are developing and exploring their use of Tinkercad for the first time this year. They have a regular iPad to create all of their designs. One of the students has access to their own 3D Printer however they are using it more for printing pre-made items rather than original design at this stage.

We were able to assess their efforts by using the Tinkercad Classroom Interface.   An effort was made to print as many of these initial designs as possible to give the students a physically created print to think about and have as an output.    As non of the prints were sized to take more than one hour (on the Bambu H2D) and there were 15 students in this group this was achievable.

Cohort Two: Students (eight years old) who used Tinkercad for one year.   These students had grasped many of the principals and ideas and used Tinkercad actively for some time.   For these students we allowed them to tutor or help the other students on the first day and on the second day start the rebuild of the toy farmhouse to replace the doors etc.   They were measuring, designing, checking and then problem solving to think about a hinge and how the door might be able to be swung open.  For the purpose of sizing the students used some examples of the name badges. We are hoping that this will lead to the sharing of ideas with the other group of students once they have completed designs. It is our intention to complete another seperate lesson next week for both groups before combing challenges from this point forward as all the students will have the fundamental design skills that are required to start working on projects. Next week we want to focus on the 'stencil' idea from last year as we want the students to master the concept of using 'hole' to insert and modify basic shapes.