3D Printed Project: Junior Evolution of Progressions

 

In March of this year we started the process of preparing for Auroa Primary School  Market Day 2025 with the concepts of innovation, personalisation and creation coming to the fore.   In this instance one of the groups decided to work on bath toys.

They used Tinkercad to create independent designs and then created a variety of tests for the prototypes to ensure that they met the brief and were correct.   You can follow the early progress and ideas formation by clicking on this link - or using the 'search' option on the right hand side and using the keyword 'Octopus'.

While we knew the floating aspect of the design would work the students wanted to explore balance and stability.  This has come up in the past with our work on 3D Printed boats and other objects - you can read details of the post about this challenge here.

This final design shown left met many of the design briefs - and students used it in their AR/VR focus and creation for the business.   However the base of the designs created some challenges for the students.   They attempted to water proof the designs using spray and hot glue gun and tried to consider design solutions while maintaining the shape.  The design in this format 90mm across at the base, 90mm high at the top of the hat.   Essentially in this format the print was either two or four hours depending on the machined.    

A variety of shapes this size were used - and while they met the floating brief - the designs were not waterproof.   Finally as noted with the boat design the base of the design needed to be expanded to ensure that the print didn't tip as soon as it was placed in water.  Initially the students added several elements to the shapes, monocles, ribbons, bowties - however when discussed a young child potentially could break some of these elements off, so as the designs were refined a lot of these elements were removed.   

The solution that the students came to was to look at the PLA that was used for printing.   Interesting the students were able to identify that the basic colours appeared to seal better at the base of the design than colours such as the silk (multi-coloured).   Examples such as the one show left were shown to remain buoyant after days of testing although they were somewhat unbalanced.

The design shown left took forty minutes to print using the Snapmaker machines and measured 30mm across at the base and was 25mm high.   The design was put in water as noted - and while it did not sit perfectly the students felt it passed the purpose test as a working bath toy.

However students felt while it was adequate they still felt that it lacked the dynamic impact of some of the elements that they had seen in flexi-animals and wanted to look at some way to increase the size of or the details around the tentacles.     This Octopus which we first attempted in 2022 was something of the inspiration - and while we have had students working on flexi aspect of the design these students have not, and the timeframe for the completion of the designs meant that feasibly the skill would take longer than is practical.

The solution that the students came up with was to redesign the Octopus placing the emphasis on the tentacles and producing a more clearly flat design.   They wanted to locate a design that already featured the tentacles and use their knowledge that they had developed to work on the head of the octopus and included in that personalisation for the customers who had indicated .

This meant that they moved in the direction of a more standard design.  This was highlight by various designs that had linking completed and were flexi animals.  This is something that we have spent considerable time on in the past developing and exploring ideas such as this.   

In this example shown left the students attempted to redesign the animal with the emphasis now (clearly) shown to be on the tentacles.  In this first attempt a prior example was used and the student made a basic attempt to alter the dimensions of the print.  This is the black design shown above.

This was not successful as the print did not have the depth to allow the linking to work successfully.   This print originally took forty five minutes.  A revised print took one and a half hours.  The revised version is shown left which included raised 10mm tentacles which when removed from the plate flowed and showed movement when placed in water.   The students determined that with the action that they would expect to see in the form of movement in the bath that the 'swimming' motion would appear with the tentacles of the octopus moving - the head or body creating the buoyancy.

The final step for the students now that the finished design has been determined is to include the personalisation and the features that the students previously experienced with the early designs.   

Ideally the students will also experiment with and develop their design skills with the linking, time permitting.    Finally to note the students involved in this process are Y3 and Y4 students from our school.  This means that the students involved are seven and eight years old who have been using Tinkercad for either one or two years in the classroom.
      

3D Printing - 2025 Flexi-Animals Project Completion

In May of this year we had a small group of students attempt the process of developing their own version of flexi-animals, a design idea that has proved to be one of the most enduring popular items on this blog over the last few years.

Initially their designs focussed on completing the linking successfully and the students have now been translating this back to the original target of applying the linking back to a range of animal designs.

As shown in the photographs left the blocky linking has been completed.   In this example the student wanted to focus on a cat, she has opted to develop this further and to change the facing of the head to a silhouette of a cat.   The print is supersize at present - with it being 140mm wide, 10mm thick and 120mm high at points.   This print took four hours to complete and the focus was on testing the linking.

The design was then scaled down tow a quarter size and additional prints were completed to test the viability of different PLA filament.

Of particular note was the difference between the two examples shown left which are direct copies of much larger print shown above.     The red regular PLA design was able to function as expected including being able to move with the linking - the 'rainbow' PLA (shown below) did not survive the printing process the head, body and tail separated.

This is something that we have experienced before.

3D Printed: Advanced Cat Designs V3.0

 Challenge: To build on a basic design and create something functional and fun!

Background: This student opted to go with a design that was not the traditional shape but instead was built up, with the storage being long and tall in the base of this design via the head.

As with other prints in this series the details were based around the literacy 'cat' idea and topic.   Students started with a short term basic design (which needed to be completed in under one hour) which produced results such as this.  The next phase was the expansion and purpose design making sure that the designs had storage.

We detailed previously about the use of eyes with prints to include with their design.   In this example we used sticker eyes that worked with this print.   This was not the intention initially the student had eyeballs in place on the print, however these did not attach successfully to the print - leaving the perfect place to then attach the stickers.

The storage option with the model can be clearly shown left, with the hole running more or less the length of the design.  The student concerned with the project is a Y4 student who is in the classroom for the second year working with Tinkercad.   

Of note with the design is the false feet on the design which are raised slightly above the base of the design, and they are also on both the front and the back of the design (which provides stability).

Size: The print measures 70mm across at the base and the main shape of the design the design is 140mm high.   As a storage for pencils and pens this is an excellent configuration.

Timeframe: Three hours.   There was minimal rafting for this print, therefore these times (on regular settings).   

What we would do differently/next steps for the students: This design has worked really well and the student is extremely pleased with the result.  The whiskers which can be clearly seen in the first (top) photo are designed to be robust to survive having the 'rafting' removed the student was potentially looking at adjusting these.