Original Articulated Animals: Further Designs

 

The Y7 student responsible for the recent production of a number of articulated animals has over the past week or so completed the design of a number in the series. 

In each instance she has followed a similar pattern she has located a pubic domain image of an animal (which has been source from a variety of internet search locations) once she has been able to import this into Tinkercad she has then applied the linking for the design (as followed initially via tutorial however she has since mastered this to the point she can complete it independently).  

Following this it is simply a matter of producing a 'test' print so that she has been satisfied with the linking (in some cases the location
has needed to be slightly altered).  This has allowed a final print to be produced.

The student regularly attends local craft market where she sells a range of goods that she produces herself (earrings, as has been featured on this site)

The school is arranging to make the snapmaker available for the student and the printers to be used with the PLA available as cost price and the student will be able to use the printers to manufacture items for sale.   This will in our opinion encourage the students creativity, expose the community to something unique that has been created by a student using technology at the school and provide them with an opportunity which they would not otherwise have had.

We are refining the prints during the holidays including looking at the student perfecting the linking and silhouette selection to allow them to produce a master set of unique, creative 3D Prints.

Market Day - Literacy Tasks for 3D Printing

One of the challenges of our recent market day with students was how we could use the 3D Printing aspect of their businesses but link it to another aspect of the curriculum.  One way that this was done was by having the students document the process that they were involved in to then write and explain the process.  This is an example of that - a noughts and crosses game board and pieces.

The student was able to use a number of screen shots to show the design process in Tinkercad to include the printed designs prior to their decoration by spray painting.   We also wanted to ensure that the students thought about the packaging that went with their products and included details (such as the small parts safety warnings and not selling them to students who were under three years of age).   In this example as it was a game we also insisted the students wrote the rules of the game and included them with the products. Logomaker.com was used to produce the design for the group.   This meant that the application of the 3D Printing and 3D Printer was wrapped around a number of aspects of the curriculum - in this instance the game board and pieces was a unique design that the student involved with personally designed.

3D Printed Market Day - Articulated Animals: Designed Prints.

 

This is the finished draft of the Flexi-animals, which were located on Thingiverse and have been produced during the previous few weeks.   The students have selectively spray painted some of them and created packaging to go with their designs.   The slug is backed on MDF which was laser cut, the other animals have simple and straightforward designs created by a Y5 student using Pic Collage.  All of the animals have an information link on the back (via a student created QR Code).     The print time of the animals featured varies slightly from two and a half hours (tiger, snake and shark) to forty five minutes (slug).

Market Day: Developing the Technology in Use

 

We are continuing to look at ways to incorporate our schools technology into our upcoming Market Day showcase for the students.

We have shown the flexible animals (flexi-animals) as a major product which has been used for the 3D Printer.   We have been looking at ways to enhance the presentation.  One of the ways is to use another piece of technology to produce the backing, as shown in the photograph on the left.   A vinyl printer has been used to produce a professional grade sticker which the 3D printed slug can be mounted to using blu-tack.   This has created a strong backing unit for the slug which is going to be further enhanced by using another key piece of our school technology - the laser cutter to cut a board of MDF which the sticker produced by the vinyl printer will then be stuck (it has been printed with adhesive backing as a sticker) to the MDF.

We have also refined our games that we are selling.   We have revised the print to look at slightly to improve the print time.  The original took ten hours, however we challenged one of the students to decrease this time, which he was able to do by redesigning the board, essentially making it less deep - this reduced the time from ten hours to five making the production of the boards much more manageable.

Spray Painting 3D Prints

 

As we continue towards our school market day, which our 3D Printers and our snapmaker have such a major role to play, we have continued to look at ways to add to the students 3D Printing experience.

We have advertisements and business lessons planned around the material used to make the 3D Prints (the students have calculated how much PLA they have used for each of their prints to come up with a realistic charge for using the printer) and profit and loss statements.

In the above photograph you can see the desk organisers which have now been spray painted to complete their presentation.   While these have not featured in a specific print post on this blog, we have detailed the creation of this sort of project in years (!) on this blog.   The only exception is to note once again we find ourselves talking very positively about the use of the Snapmaker to complete the project in terms of not only time but also design and waste, both of which have shown significant improvement since switching machines.

As shown left the Tigers, previously detailed on this blog have undergone a significant transformation with a spray of orange and black to represent more traditional colour of a tiger.   The snakes having been printed in lilac green have had a spray of green on the top (which looks particularly striking with the underneath complementing it)

It goes without saying the students themselves have been thrilled with the results, the details and the overall look of the animals from this project.     We were able to complete this spray painting with some budget aerosol cans which were available from a locally supplied shop.   The quality of the paint was extremely pleasing.

Market Day Animals Accessories

 

Challenge: Creation of original accessories to add depth to flexi-animals for market day.

Background: As part of the market day the students are using the Snapmaker printer to create a range of flexi-animals for sale.   The question has been what is the content that the students can create that is original but fits in with style and design of the animal.   Originally the students were looking to manufacture and design a to scale accessory, however following a discussion about the viability of this the students decided to opt for 'comedy' accessories or accessories that were super sized but didn't necessarily stay true to scale, hence the size of the bone shown.     The other item clearly shown here is the dog bowl which is complete with food.  Both are created using Tinkercad - the students were able to identify the items, the theme was related to the animal.   The label was created from logomaker.com and the only other aspect that needs to be explained is the movie or the information.   This was created via a QR code which is on the reverse of the label

Level of Difficulty: Low - student was able to produce the bone and bowl from the basic interface in five minutes and was printed without any adjustment.

Size: The bone was 50mm across, 20mm wide and 10mm high.   These dimensions focussed on producing something not too small.   The food bowl was 25 across and 8mm high.   

Timeframe: Using the Snapmaker twenty minutes from start to finish for each.

What we would do differently/next steps for students: Spray painting and working out a way to add the small details with the print.

The students reasoned that the same accessories for the dog would work with the Tiger, as shown left.   Perhaps something more unique could be designed but overall very happy with the result.

3D Printed Student Business: Market Day Animals

Challenge: For students to use a 3D Printer to run a successful business for school market day.

Background: As mentioned previously the students are currently working to run a business.  We wanted to include 3D Printing in this aspect of the business as it allowed the students to create something memorable for the students.   Ideally we wanted the students to create a unique animal for the 3D Printed animals and while this was successful (see the Kiwi print) we also wanted to have an opportunity to have the printer use and create the other animals.   The question that we needed to resolve with this was what was the creative input from the students - if they were printing an available 3D Print (in this case design and located via Thingiverse) What would the role of the students be?   

The answer to this was the packaging that came with the product.     The labelling was created by using Logo Maker and then printed out.

For the back of the label had a printed QR Code - this led to additional information the students created two seperate sets of information.

The first was a movie about the animal featuring it in a series of adventures where the students made a short film featuring the animal.  In the second there was animal facts about the featured animals with a more serious non-fiction text.    Both these creative outlets allowed the students to create something to tie in directly with the 3D Print to be creative and orginal.

3D Printed Student Creative Art Projects: LED Jar/Lights V2.0

Above: LED insert and the double rings.

Left: This is an update of a previous print, as it has been significantly adapted.   The project here was for our 2019 School Market Day.  In the original poste detailed on this blog the 3D Printer was used to create a single line for an LED Light/Jar combination. 

Students sourced an LED light online from an online store.   They then separately purchased a set of jars from an online New Zealand store.  A transfer was then applied to the outside of the jars and they were spray painted.   The transfer was removed meaning the light was able to illuminate specific shapes that the students had created.

Above: The 3D Printed component of the light.

The LED light needed a ring placed around it to allow it to drop into place at the top of the jar in the original design.   Students after testing found a fault with this, as changing the LED light meant the ring couldn't be permanently placed on the top of the jar.   The students came up with a solution for this, they created a set of two rings.   The first, as shown left, was super-glued into place on the jar, and fixed permanently in place.  The LED light was glued into the second ring and this ring sat on the first ring, which meant if it needed to be removed from the jar it could be easily taken out. 

The role of the 3D Printer in completing this project was essential - the rings that were produced needed to be a specific diameter to ensure that the light could be held in place, as without them the light could not be mounted to the jar.     The design while it was basic required a specific size to ensure it worked and involved the students testing twelve protypes until one that met the brief worked successfully.   The print time for the rings was relativeely minimal - the students were aiming to produce 140 rings to ensure that the jars were completed and they had back up lights as well.   These were produced in a batch of six rings at a time which took a combined print time of 90 minutes.  Each

Above: The completed project - with light switched on.

ring had a diameter of 10mm and was 50mm high with a width of 5mm.   If it had been printed individually it would have had a estimated time of 20 minutes to complete.

The project was a fantastic example of combining the 3D Printer with other technology/craft to produce something with a meaningful purpose.  It allowed the project to be completed successfully which would not have been possible without it.   The finish of the lights for the Year 5/6 project needed a little refinement, as shown in the photograph, but this was more in relation to the use of spray paint in the finish, and relative to the number of jars that the students produced.   In hindsight the students would have produced them over time and concentrated on producing a clear finish. 

Project Update: Art Letter for Market Day

Project Update: As detailed previously on this blog the students from this classroom have an upcoming Market Day project where they have to run a small scale business.  The students were keen to adapt the 3D Printer to provide a means for producing word art of phrases that they could then mount on wood.   They wanted to use the 3D Printer to produce the lettering.    In various testing and trialing the students attempted to print various phrases and lettering as detailed in the previous print.   After deciding to use pallet wood as their backing wood, the students then used sandpaper to take away the rough edges of the wood and then used a commercial staining wood stain that was available to produce a finished affect on the wood.   The last stage was then to determine which colour PLA worked with the stained wood and the size of the font and lettering used.    The students made the decision to focus on the "Dream & Achieve" phrase.   The font Dream measured 130mm across and was 60mm high as well as being 5mm thick.   The ampersand in the middle was by far the smallest of the three

measuring 30mm by 30mm.   The final part of the design was the "Achieve" this was also 130mm across but in contrast to the 'Dream' was only 30mm wide but also 5mm high.     This lettering was designed to sit on wood that was 450mm long and was 50mm high.   Originally it was thought the 'dream' would be in a different colour, such as the purple PLA.   However as is shown in the test print on the left the 'Dream' part of the print has a dark stain created on the wood and while the 'achieve' stands out the 'dream' part of the project is hard to identify at distance.  The next step for the student is to work through different colours contrasting to the dark background to see what stands out and is effective at making the print be more of a display piece.   The students have already identified Glow-In-the-Dark Filament as important to this project.   The teacher has given feedback to the students related to the print and how best to attach the lettering to the wood (currently experimenting with wood glue).   The teacher has also spoken to the students about the mounting of the 3D Printed lettering.  In the last prototype shown above the students have not spaced the lettering evenly, and although it is not obvious from the photograph they have not removed the excess PLA from the lettering meaning that some of the lettering is not sitting flat on the wood.