Sticker Machine: Creating a Playing Board for a Game

 Challenge: Students have been looking at developing an individualised project to use the sticker machine, the laser cutter and the 3D printer to integrate them together.

Background: This was very much a student conceived and driven project.   The student in this case  was a basketball fan and wanted to come up with a game themed around basketball, the NBA and their specific favourite team.  The base for the game consists of a large decal which was converted from a .gif file that the student found online.  The court measured 30cm high and was 60cm across.  It was printed onto a sheet of MDF which was cut the correct size using the schools laser cutter.

The conversion of the file was very straight forward.  The next step was for the student to create hosts for the hoops for the basketball hoops.  These were constructed using the laser cutter and cut to size.

In conjunction with these the hoops for the backboard and the basketball ball stands were built.   These were designed in Tinkercad and 3D Printed.   The base was then produced in conjunction with this, and was designed to support the hoops by having them inserted into the MDF and then allowing them to stand independently.   

Level of Difficulty: Low.  The base for the court is essentially a single print, file and image which did not require any alteration from the design.   The hoops and stands were straightforward basic shapes to work in conjunction with each other.

Timeframe: The 3D print aspect of the design was two hours, the sticker printing was minimal as was the laser cutting. The Roland Versa Sign Maker was essential to complete this task successfully.

Size as noted - 60cm by 30cm for the court, the other elements were relative.  A modification of the size would depend on the purpose as described below.

What we would do differently/next steps for the students: The idea is to create a game which the board and the pieces are related to, the next challenge for the student is how to process and produce this.  The game is currently a board, with hoops and ideas it needs to have additional features to make it functional. 

The student is very pleased with their results to this point but is currently assessing ideas in how they might progress the project further.

Market Day - Literacy Tasks for 3D Printing

One of the challenges of our recent market day with students was how we could use the 3D Printing aspect of their businesses but link it to another aspect of the curriculum.  One way that this was done was by having the students document the process that they were involved in to then write and explain the process.  This is an example of that - a noughts and crosses game board and pieces.

The student was able to use a number of screen shots to show the design process in Tinkercad to include the printed designs prior to their decoration by spray painting.   We also wanted to ensure that the students thought about the packaging that went with their products and included details (such as the small parts safety warnings and not selling them to students who were under three years of age).   In this example as it was a game we also insisted the students wrote the rules of the game and included them with the products. Logomaker.com was used to produce the design for the group.   This meant that the application of the 3D Printing and 3D Printer was wrapped around a number of aspects of the curriculum - in this instance the game board and pieces was a unique design that the student involved with personally designed.