Dolls House Project: 2025 Summary

 

3D Printed Extension - Reworking a 2024 Money Box Design

 

Previously this design was created and originated by a student who is now in another classroom.   In the example shown left the student was looking to create a money box. 

The student had wanted to improve the design and had thought about adding a way to remove the coins put into the bank.   This year we are having a school Market Day one of the students from the class this year wanted to create a money box as a potential item for sale.  They looked at previous examples from our class blog and located one of the examples.   We spoke to the student concerned who had now moved to another classroom but we had retained the classroom page and student pages with their designs.

The key issue to improve the design was some kind of opening or way to ensure the removal of coins placed inside.   The students idea was to produce a door as shown.   The student who is currently ten years old found an online tutorial for the process and then completed the design addition.

There are issues with the design as it stands - the student has created the base, but the balance at the bottom will be something that they need to refine.  They have proven however to be one of the strongest designers in our school in recent years, and this is something that they should master in very short order.   

This student has shown since the start of her time in the junior classroom (as a seven year old) to be capable of designing a series of projects that I would consider as good as our senior students.

Update: Upon printing the revised version of the print, including the opening at the bottom the student was able to determine that the mechanism for opening was not working as she had hoped.  There was no issue with the placing of the base, and the balance was retained by the two aspects of the design.

The student was not happy with the 'pin' aspect of the design that was she wanted it to work and lock in place, however it didn't work as intended.  She has asked to take home the prototype to be able to redesign the pin in a way that it will work successfully as intended.
   

3D Printing - Mathematical Resources

 

This is a companion piece of sorts to a previous post about using the laser cutter to produce ones, tens and hundreds boards for help with place value.

The speed was there however MDF generally is not as durable as PLA and the 3D Printed material can sometimes be better especially if something is intended to be handled extensively.

In this case we were able to locate a download from the Thingiverse website which was titled Place Value Cub Manipulative.  This file contained the designs that we were looking for - a one, tens and hundreds block.   The time to complete the blocks was scaled.

The single blue cube, which represents a base value of one took three minutes to print.   The block of ten took just under thirty minutes and the hundred block (which is not pictured) took three and a half hours.

As this was a pre-made print there was no design necessary but the amount of PLA could then give us a price point for each of these objects.

For the purposes of keeping the price simple we have used a cost of $43.00 for a roll of 1kg of filament.

The single cube (three minutes) uses 0.7g of PLA to complete the print and takes three minutes.   At this price we could produce over 1400 pieces which would give us a price point cost of three cents each.

The ten block needs 5.5g of PLA to complete and takes half an hour.   With a roll of 1kg of material it would be possible to produce 181 from a single roll and the price point for that would be twenty four cents each.

The hundreds board was created using 42.1g of PLA and took three and a half hours to complete.  With the measurements and expectations listed above it would be possible to produce 23 of these from a standard roll of PLA, which would be a price to produce each board of $1.87.

All these figures are listed in New Zealand Dollars.