3D Printed Projects: Individualised Basic Projects

Challenge: For students to create (independently) a variety of designs that were original and created and personalized for the purpose of a gift.
Background:  Having completed the 'sound lure' project for the year the 3D Printers here at School were available for a variety of projects.   The students were asked to create a concept or idea, which was original, which allowed them to personalize something and then created it independently.  Some of these projects were inspired by work from the past, which has been already featured on this blog.  Full details of those projects are available in the links next to the photographs.

   Left: An introductory name plate for a student completely new to 3D Printing.  The instructions for the student was prepared by another student who tutored the student, and also in the form of a flipped video that students produced earlier in the year.

This is a basic design/concept/idea that has featured many times on this blog which is detailed here.

This took four and a half hours and was 90mm by 60mm and was 5mm thick with the lettering another 5mm (and star) out from the design,

Another project was similar but 'Christmas Themed' with an insert Reindeer, and hearts that wen through the shape, the name of the student in this instance was sunk into the design of the plate (in contrast to the design above when it was raised up from the base).    The student was also working for the first time on a 3D Printing project and like the student involved in the above project is ten years old.  They were able to be paired up with a student who had worked Tinkercad before and the design was original and personalized.   It was 100mm by 100mm and 5mm thick, with a five hour print time.  Again the tutorial video was used as a back up resource to assist with teaching, and there are considerable Christmas themed examples of this on this blog running from simple designs with a name to individually created 3D Projects based around Christmas ideas (such as the Sleigh featured here).   These projects range in difficulty level from basic, which would take five minutes to much more advanced and complicated designs that would potentially require reworking and remodelling.

A slight variation of the above themes saw the creation of this badge for a child's room, which was created by a student following the format above.   The PLA used by the printer is extremely durable and wearing, meaning that the designs themselves seldom fade or can be broken.  We have been testing this theory with a number of prints to show the evacuation assembly area at school, which when put outside in an exposed area have maintained their shape and form for approaching two years.   This print was 5mm thick, with the lettering and stars an additional 5mm, 60mm high and 140mm across the print time was four and a half hours.

In the final design that we wanted to highlight, a student wanted to create a gift to mark a family members, first Christmas.   Again the basic design format was followed as with other designs in this group.   The design featured no 'rafting' o additional PLA required to complete the project, the student was able to created, design and complete the project themselves while meeting the criteria that was created at the start of the project.   The print measured 140mm across, was 10mm thick (including the lettering in the middle) and featured a whole in the top of the design to attach it to a Christmas Tree.   This took four hours to print on our default settings.

3D Printed Lettering Combined with Laser Cutting

Challenge: Student wanted to combine the lettering created with a 3D Printer with the use of the school laser cutter with the goal of producing something as a gift for Chirstmas.
Background: Student has shown excellence in use of 3D Printing in the Classroom.  While they are extremely gifted with design we have been trying to encourage to them to think about combining technologies and ideas.   In this case the student created the lettering first, and then used the school laser cutter to cut into MDF to create the background image.   The image came from a simple online search and took approximatley ten minutes to laser cut.  The lettering was created using Tinkercad from the main interface.   The 'Monty' lettering shown with the above photograph was 15mm high and measured 60mm across - taking forty minutes to print.  It was then superglued to the base.

Left: Further repeating the process the student added a coat of basic gold paint to the same process, the base was wood with MDF again and the lettering was a simple case of creating a basic Tinkercad Font design with lettering which were 20mm high and 40mm across. 

The laser cut aspect of the design took ten minutes for the cutting, the design itself was freely available online.

Left: Another similar design instead featuring a rabbit.  Again a similar process to the other designs, the student is using freely available designs or outlines of creatures (in this case the rabbit) and then painting it with a gold backing colour.   The student has gone with a 'Christmas Red' PLA to contrast with the 'gold paint' producing the red to stand out and for effect.

For the printing part of the name the default settings that you will be familar with on this blog apply.

 Next Steps for the Students: The student concerned has developed her use of the 3D Printer to an extremely high standard producing a significant body of work.   The next logical step to extend hereself is to look at combining the two technologies more on significant projects.

3D Printed Gift Box (Advanced) - Xmas Gift

Above: Box with lid and person lettering

Challenge - To produce a Christmas theme gift box with a working lid, personalised for the person that it was intended to be for.
Background: Student was attempting an advanced print for the first time.   They had completed basic designs but this was the first attempt to involve using the 3D Printer to produce an object with parts that related to each other (in this case the lid, with a drop down base and ensuring that both parts worked in unison with each other.
Level of Difficulty: Medium.   The box as shown in the illustration included a lid, with the name of the person that it was gifted for.  It included a handle that is clearly shown above, with rafting removed.   The base of the design included lettering themed with 'merry xmas' as it was intended as a seasonal gift.  The 'box' template that was used came from the Tinkercad main interface.
Timeframe: Fifteen hours for the base and the lid combined.   The width of the lid was 5mm and the handle potentially could have been lower, however redesigning the box would not have been possible to reduce the printing time.  An 8mm nozzle was used for the print, which ensure that the time was probably the minimum that would have been required to produce a print of this size and design.
Size: 10cm by 10cm with a height of 8cm.  The width of the lid and the sides of the box was 5mm.  As noted the size of the box relative to the purpose of it (as a gift box for jewellery etc)
What we would do differently: As shown in the photograph above the lettering in the base of the box was dropped into the design.  In removing the filament around the lettering it is extremely difficult to remove it succesfully without causing part of the font to be removed (such as the middle m stroke in the 'merry' part of the design).  We have tried a variety of tools to remove this successfully and are still searching for the best soultion, it is particularly difficult given the size of the font.  Potentially the font could have been increased in size.
Next Steps of students: Student is now able to confidently produce and make boxes of medium difficulty.   Student will be encouraged to move onto more challenging and varied designs.   Student could mentor others to produce this sort of design and also variations of it.