3D Customised Art Insects

Challenge: For an art design project/sculpture project created by the students to create and 3D design an insect that would work in conjunction with the art display.

Background: Using an Ultimaker 2+ as a printing tool, using Tinkercad as a design tool the students first sketched a diagram of an insect that was related to a plant that they were making that was constructed from wire - for instance a dragonfly with a cactus.    The students in the classroom were confident with using the 3D Printer having completed the introductory tasks that are listed on this blog.   The insects were designed by the ten and eleven year old students using the basic interface design and additional tools.    Students were concentrating on producing a print that was to scale so the print time for all of the insects or animals described here did not exceed twenty minutes and some of the smaller ones were under ten minutes.    

The students brief was to use the 3D Printer to design the insect/animal and additional features of the insects would be added once the creations had been spray painted.    Some of the smaller aspects of the insects are going to be added using additional media, such as wire for the antenna.

Level of Difficulty: Medium there are a variety of designs and creations in this sequence all of which have slightly different aspects.   These designs were all created by students who have used Tinkercad before and were confident in their abilities.   The final design of the plants themselves (such as the cactus shown on the left) is still to be completed so the size o the plants may be altered.   

Size: All of the prints were as close to the possible of the size of the actual insect - so they ranged from a few centimetres to the largest in this sequence which was the dragonfly.   This was 10cm long.  Some of the smaller designs, such as the Ladybugs shown on the left were only two or three centimetres across.

Timeframe: These prints did not take the typical length of time that are listed on this blog, this is primarily because of the scale of them.   By far the longest in the set was the dragonfly which came in at fifty minutes, as mentioned the smaller ones in the series were under ten each.

What we would do differently/Next Steps for the students: Using spray paint to decorate a number of the insects will be key to finishing their details and design.    Once a base coat has been applied additional details can be added to finish the designs.  The students also have been challenged to produce the insects to scale to complete the art design so there is potential to adjust some of the prints - given the length of time for each one and the PLA involved this is not a particularly major deal.

Project Update: Art Letter for Market Day

Project Update: As detailed previously on this blog the students from this classroom have an upcoming Market Day project where they have to run a small scale business.  The students were keen to adapt the 3D Printer to provide a means for producing word art of phrases that they could then mount on wood.   They wanted to use the 3D Printer to produce the lettering.    In various testing and trialing the students attempted to print various phrases and lettering as detailed in the previous print.   After deciding to use pallet wood as their backing wood, the students then used sandpaper to take away the rough edges of the wood and then used a commercial staining wood stain that was available to produce a finished affect on the wood.   The last stage was then to determine which colour PLA worked with the stained wood and the size of the font and lettering used.    The students made the decision to focus on the "Dream & Achieve" phrase.   The font Dream measured 130mm across and was 60mm high as well as being 5mm thick.   The ampersand in the middle was by far the smallest of the three

measuring 30mm by 30mm.   The final part of the design was the "Achieve" this was also 130mm across but in contrast to the 'Dream' was only 30mm wide but also 5mm high.     This lettering was designed to sit on wood that was 450mm long and was 50mm high.   Originally it was thought the 'dream' would be in a different colour, such as the purple PLA.   However as is shown in the test print on the left the 'Dream' part of the print has a dark stain created on the wood and while the 'achieve' stands out the 'dream' part of the project is hard to identify at distance.  The next step for the student is to work through different colours contrasting to the dark background to see what stands out and is effective at making the print be more of a display piece.   The students have already identified Glow-In-the-Dark Filament as important to this project.   The teacher has given feedback to the students related to the print and how best to attach the lettering to the wood (currently experimenting with wood glue).   The teacher has also spoken to the students about the mounting of the 3D Printed lettering.  In the last prototype shown above the students have not spaced the lettering evenly, and although it is not obvious from the photograph they have not removed the excess PLA from the lettering meaning that some of the lettering is not sitting flat on the wood.

3D Printed Art Lettering for Market Day Project

Above: the 20mm 'STAY' lettering

Challenge: A student project team are working on running a classroom business for a market day want to utilise the 3D Printer to produce lettering for words and phrases that could be then combined with wooden blocks/lettering to produce a finished piece of art.
Background: The students of the school have a project this term for them to run a business.  A number of the students groups are producing art based projects.   One group was interested in looking at producing signage on wooden blocks of themes or sayings.   To produce the lettering part of the art project the students wanted to utilise the 3D Printer to produce the lettering and then mount it onto the wood.    This involved the students selecting a design that they were happy with and producing a font that reflected a design and style and that could be combined with the wood.  For the wood the students selected a wood pallet and used the school Woodwork room to cut the wood into blocks.    The students were dealing with a block that was

Above: Live featured as 30mm design

50mm high and 500mm across.    They had the potential to shorten the length of the block dependant of the length of the words or phrase.    The students were able to trial print the lettering and then work out the dimensions of the wood that they wanted to use.   The students started with a basic design and font, worked out the dimensions and then develop an idea of concepts related to that.  They also identified key areas to move forward successfully with the product - that they would need a Wood Glue to mount the lettering onto the wood and also for the wood to be stained to help enhance the look of the lettering.   The colour of the PLA will be contrasted with the staining of the wood.   Once completed the price of the design was minimum - the PLA for the plastic for the 3D Printing and the Wood Glue and stain were the only expenses that the group needed to account for.   The students also are keen to experiment with different PLA relative to the stained wood and look into using different filaments with the potential for the use of glow-in-the-dark PLA.

#3DPrintEdu - 120mm x 60mm

Level of Difficulty: Low - the single challenge for the production of the art block and combination with the 3D Printing.    The font selection from Tinkercad is significant the only aspect that the students needed to determine was the size of the font that they were printing.
Size: As shown in the photograph the 'Stay' font measured 20mm high and was grouped (clustered) as 60mm across.   This font was designed to be 5mm deep.   The 'Live' font shown in photograph was 30mm high, 70mm across and 10mm deep.    The #3DPrintEDU chat font was 120mm across groupd and 60mm high.   The depth of the print was 5mm.    The largest print that was run in this run was the 'LAUGH' print and font - this font was larger that the block of wood that it was intended for.    This measured 130mm wide and 70mm high.  It had a depth of 10mm.

Above: the final trial design

Timeframe: As this was a series of prints the lettering itself varied significantly.   In the four featured prints here the 'Stay' print took thirty minutes.   The 'Live' print was forty five minutes.   The '#3DPrintEDU' print took one hour.    'Laugh' was the biggest print of the series (as noted it is essentially oversized) which took two and half hours.     This would vary depending on the size of the block that the students would anticipate using - that had a measurement of 50mm high (but again could be cut to size). 
What we would do differently: The students have a lot of potential development to come relative to the size of the wood that they had produced and cut.    The colour of the wood that is produced from the staining will influence the final design and PLA choices by the students.   The students are also looking for a 'wow' factor and want to experiment with different PLA options and choices including Glow-In-the-Dark filament.

3D Printing - Scanning an Object with Qlone

Two of the hands - the left is an incomplete print

Challenge: For a ten year old to scan an object and convert it into a 3D Print (using Qlone).
Background: This started as an art project and genuine question from one of the students - how could they scan their hands for a print idea that they had for a Mothers Day Art Project.   This involved the student concerned conducting research into an app that could be used (in conjunction with an iPad) that was inexpensive (see below) to scan an object and then convert this to a .stl file and then print the result.   There was an assumption before this process was begun that there would be multiple apps for an iPad that might fit this bill, but upon using search engines and investigation there aren't too many.   The student read a review for an App called qlone which is featured on this website.   When used in conjunction with an iPad there is an interface that allows repeated scanning of an object to produce a 3D Copy of the model.   This was produced by ten year old student taking multiple pictures of the object (this is explained in a video that will show the entire process, it was involving taking several shots to complete the scan of thier hand (close to fifty would be a basic estimate).    The student then went to convert the 3D image to an .stl file for the purpose of ensuring a 3D Print could be completed.  This is when the pay scale for the app revealed itself.   The purpose of this post is not to criticise a product but the license to convert to an .stl is based around a sliding scale that bottoms out at $50.00 for unlimited conversions.   As a school we decided to proceed with this purchased on a single device so that the scanning could be completed.    This allowed the student to produce a series of scans of the hands of herself and two of her sisters.

Level of Difficutly: Medium the scanning itself is straight forward and was able to produce a pleasing replica of the students hands.    The conversion from here to a 3D Print was very straightforward however the time taken to take the photographs for the scan was time consuming.
Timeframe: The hands that made up the series of prints went for six hours or so each.   Given that they were intended to be part of a gift and to scale there was little ability to reduce the print time, with the standard thickness settings and a 8mm nozzle meaning this would be the minimum required.
Size: Its the hand of a four year old student featured in the black PLA her sister is four years old in the example shown in white as a size comparison.   It was all relative to the object that was scanned as the student did not want to reduce the size.
What we would do differently: We are interested in hearing if there are other apps and opportunities to easily scan objects for 3D Printing that would be available to our students.   There are a number of objects that we are intending to replicate over the next few weeks to test the reliability and accuracy of the scanning using the app so we can assess the results.  We also want to balance the app with having to purchase additional hardware.