3D Printed Super Sized Minecraft Cow

 

Challenge: For eight year old students to produce a unique, original Minecraft themed print using Tinkercad as the design tool.  Criteria: Print must be original and also have a purpose.

Background: Much like last weeks Axolotl which had been completed and organised for storage, this Minecraft cow originally featured as a AR/VR post on this blog which you can view by clicking on the link here. 

The print was deliberately designed to be oversized and we were interested in pushing the limits of the Bambu H2D, as shown in the dimensions below.

The link between Minecraft and Tinkercad has been documented numerous times by the students at our school as the blocks of Minecraft can be replicated directly or indirectly via Tinkercad.   You can view examples of this by clicking on the link here.

Level of Difficulty: Medium/High - this was not for the feint hearted and involved two students one from cohort one and one from cohort two producing a joint effort to complete this print.  Given the scale of the print we would not be producing it unless we were happy that it ticked off a number of criteria.

Size: This was one of the largest prints that we had completed in some time.  The print had a height of 170mm and was 180mm long.   The main body of the cow was 90mm across, 130mm wide and 60mm high.  Each of the four legs are 40mm by 40mm and 120mm high.

Cost/Price: The print used 382g of filament to produce, including the rafting or waste plastic.  This had a price point in its current format of $9.55 to produce.   With this in mind this is the biggest in the series, by some distance of the prints that we are intending to turn from AR/VR designs into physical projects and prints.  With PLA being generally ordered in 1kg spools obviously three of these would be required for each roll.

Timeframe: Nine and a half hours.   As we stated this is one of the longest prints that we have produced in the classroom this year.   A reminder that as we are using the Bambu H2D the speed of machine is roughly twice as quick as that of a regular Snapmaker, hence our reluctance to undertake to print this sort of project on that machine.   As we have stated during the year it is our intention to complete every print this calendar year from a single machine.

What we would do differently/Next steps for the students: It should be evident from the dimensions of this print and the details of it that we are not intending to complete something of this scale to any great level based on the cost and the amount of filament used.   The students could have increased the size of the storage area on the back of the cow and ideally perhaps added some small details to the design.  They are intended to have adults spray paint the print to complete the colour matching for the design.

Misc. 3D Details as the Term comes to an end...

We completed our 'cow' themed table centre piece for the community dinner - using a combination of different filament and some spray painting to produce a run of 15 different cows, one for each table!

These cows were detailed in a previous print on this blog - which you can access by clicking on the link here.

We have detailed this process including talking about the importance of involving the community and supporting community events as one of our 'lore of 3D printing talking points'. 

We recently 'discovered' an amazing New Zealand based company that are doing amazing things with PLA including recycling and producing unique PLA including one that is combined with wool.   

KiwiFil

This site and their story is incredible and we can't wait to spread the word about this far and wide.   We will start printing with the amazing samples that they shared with us and will share them as soon as possible.   In the meantime we would strongly encourage you to check our their amazing story on their Facebook page which you can click on by accessing the link here.

Our students who have been working on their own designs, in their own time to develop their Tinkercad schools are continuing to do so.   We are undertaking to print as many of these projects as we can between times and will continue to feature them on this blog.

A reminder that you can use the 'search' bar on this blog to search our student/school archives and look at or examine 11 years of 3D Printing projects, ideas and student work.   Every project has a specific tag related to its posting on the blog such as 'badge' for something like the new example produced this week.

We are continuing to focus on AR/VR projects and looking at ways to utilise Tinkercad and the Tinkercad App to produce authentic tasks with the students iPads.   Students are now refiing their original ideas having to research and develop their ideas so that we can present these ideas to the school for further consideration.  You can read about the original post on this blog here.

3D Printed: Projects to create interest

 

We have mentioned in the past about prints that we produce that are generated from online sites - and while we do not print them in significant numbers we do so on occasion either for a specific purpose or to create a thinking point for students.

Two recent examples are for a community event where the local farming group are having an event.  We have previously produced table centre pieces for a local surf club dinner in February 2023 in a post where you can see the details here.

In this example shown with the cow we located a print that had been made available online via the Thingiverse site.   This is one of a number of online sites that have a huge volume of files, projects and options available, some of which in the past we have modified for our own students projects - such as this example when a coaster was inverted to provide the backing image for an iPad stand that was used in our 2025 School Market Day.

As can be seen from the illustration the cow itself has considerable detail.   For the dinner we are intended to create the point of interest by printing a range of the cows in different colours that would make them stand out, hence the 'glass orange' shown in the photo but we will be producing a group of fifteen or so in non traditional colours.

Each of the prints is significant.   It measures 200mm across and stands 150mm high.   The print uses 130g of filament to complete, costs $3.23 and takes four hours and ten minutes to complete.   There was a degree of rafting or waste plastic underneath the base of the cow but it was not significant.   While the cost of the production of these animals is significant is the schools intention to see it as a donation and also potentially use these animals as part of a class play set following the event for our junior class of students as farming based activities can be quite popular.

Likewise the spider (shown left) has come out of the students in the classroom and one in particular has a specific interest in spiders.   We were able to produce this spider as a reward for the student to complete their work.   It is fairly significant in that it measures 160mm long and is 130mm wide.   The print uses 65g of PLA filament to complete and cost $1.50 to produce.   It has a print time to complete of three hours and ten minutes.

This is going to be an item that is printed in limited amounts, and we would ask students who wanted something like this 'what would you add to change it or what would be the purpose of the print - if they could demonstrate an idea to modify or adapt this print then it would meet some basic criteria but as it stands this will very much remain a limited design.