3D Printed Fidget Spinner Progressions

 

Challenge: For a nine year old student to be able to produce their own unique or personalised version of a fidget spinner.

Background: This is a recent task that has undergone a number of changes and development with one of our students who is nine years old, they have been using Tinkercad for two years and have shown a degree of thinking and creativity with their designs.

In this instance we had a recent challenge around producing a gift for another person but ensure that it was original and also was personalised.   The student knew that 3D Printed Fidget Spinners had been produced and wanted to start the process themselves.   Their first version was completed in Tinkercad - it also used a template located in Tinkercad which they adapted.   The print measured 70mm wide, was 70mm high and had a thickness of 10m.   This had a thirty minute print time.

In this instance the print didn't allow the fidget to easily operate as it required a blade to remove the rafting around the base of the design.    We spoke to the student and brainstormed various ideas - and they came up with the idea of using ChatpGPT to create the .stl file for the project.

This produced the file shown left - obviously in this example the shape was there and the student was able to 'spin' the spinner by placing it on their finger but the design was lacking the depth and the detail that the student wanted to have.   They were able to take this design and look at functionality of it.

This example was 60mm across in diameter.   It had a width of 5mm and took just under thirty minutes to complete the print.  We discussed with the student using another more detailed AI prompt to produce a better finish however the student also thought at this point that they might like to develop the design further using the base as the starting point.

The next version was located by accessing the online portal that is available with Bambu Studio Labs.

We have detailed our schools 3D Printing journey starting with the various machines and combinations over time which has currently been focussed on our use of Bambu 3D Printers.

In this example shown left is labelled online as the 'Original Fidget Spinner'.   It comes in two pages of design the first is the shown in the photograph on the left, assembled.    It comes as a base plate two hinges and an insert that clicks into place.   When this is assembled it provides a robust spinner that has exceptional function.

This spinner measures 70mm across.   It is currently incomplete the base shown here has a forty seven minute print time and uses 10g of regular PLA this has a price point for the print of $0.21c.

While this provides the student to the solution of the engineering problem there is still the scope to measure, design and test the inserts that can go into the design.   One of the aspects that has been identified is the potential to use filament such as the glow-in-the dark filament.   As the fidget has three different portions for insert we want to allow the students to consider what they might design for this space - do they opt for the letters for instance of a students name or the initials or other sequence or group of letters.   

The relative small cost and print time for this design means that it would be easily to produce.  Also of note this would appear to have potential as a Market Day Item of the future as it would allow a small price point have a particular interest to students (with the movement) and the student could contribute to the design with the disc to be inserted.

Finally the fact that the print can also be produced in four seperate component pieces allows the design to be taken apart and the engineering aspect of the design looked at and further discussed.