3D Printed: Market Day ideas for 2025

We have been looking at creating interests for our students for Market Day 2025.   We are trying to encourage our students by further developing the examples as they progress.   Something similar like the addition of basic fairy lights to our Minecraft themed nightlight has had the students thinking about colour, design and composition.

As we have mentioned previously the example shown left is chiefly generated by students using files located from 3D Printing sharing sites such as Thingiverse.

You can read additional information about the print here.

Generally as a rule we try to encourage our students to look at using commercial grade prints as inspiration rather than simply printing them out.   Our students are constantly sharing examples and prints from online, many of which have been purchased from online retailers.   We recently had to problem solve for a student who had purchased a small dragon in an egg online, where the egg itself had snapped at the join.  While the student was wanting to replace the original we also saw an opportunity to use a small scale, detailed dragon as a point of conversation.  As the print was small measuring 20mm across and being 35mm high it takes just over thirty minutes to print.   By printing multiple copies we encouraged conversations about games that we could play - such as noughts and crosses.   We have had students construct entire games like this for our previous market days.

Phone stands are another item that we are currently investigating.   It is something that fits the key criteria for our market day - innovation and personalisation.

Our students are able to master a design like this independently with ease, the base design has been shown to our students as an example from a past project left.

We also have the advantage of being able to have a range of examples that have been featured in the past on this blog such as a heavily personalised example from 2023 and or a smaller example that was created in 2018.

We see these as starting points for our students and projects for them to work on to develop their ideas and skills moving forward.

3D Printed Game Soccer Goal Post

Challenge: Student was interested in producing a game of table soccer.  As part of the game he wanted to have a clearly defined goal post for the game.  He had tried cardboard versions of the goal posts but wanted something that would be more robust and permanent.
Background: Student was looking at ways to produce goal posts for the game mentioned.  There were various designs that the student looked at creating, including attempting to replicate existing versions of this print.  The student had attempted to design this from scratch but was not satisified with their results, relative to other versions that were available.   It is also worth mentioning that the student concerned is nine years old and this was his first attempt at 3D Printing - he has seen other projects that students have worked on but is developing his confidence with 3D Printing.

Level of Difficulty: Low - this is intended as an ongoing project which the student will produce a series of prints associated with the game.  The print is straightforward, the engagement with the student is as important as the process.   Creating the goal-posts as the student has done will drive the game itself foward as the rest of the details will follow the size of the goal.
Timeframe: Five hours - there were versions of the print that included netting etc but the decision was made to focus on the poles and to keep the design basic.
Size: The width of the deisgn was 110mm.   The back of the design was 120mm long.  The height was 100mm.   The various poles that make up the goal posts were 10mm thick.   We are intending to test the strength of the goal posts relative for the game and would be looking at redesigning these if prove to be not strong enough. 
What we would do differently: We would look at road testing this design to ensure that it would work.  The print was produced as a single file - there was considerable discussion about the printing of the individual goal posts and then super-gluing all the pieces together post printing.   We decided not to do this as the student wanted to be successful with their print run.
Next Steps for Students: As mentioned this is looking as developing a game as part of wider project.