3D Printed Marble Maze: Junior

 

Challenge: For students to create a unique project that involves movement and engineering challenges.

Background: We have been posting about this project as it developed from a idea based around movement and morphed into a challenge for the students to develop their own marble mazes.   We have a range of designs created from student producing their own unique mazes to taking and adapting existing models, such as the one shown left.

In this example the design aspects of the project are focussed around the student creating the 'traps' for the ball, which range from a simple hole to be placed into the design to the addition of ramps and blocks which can be seen in green on the design shown left.   The student had to also consider the size of the gap between the walls of the maze and then think about a ball to run through it - would Tthey use a marble? a smaller 3D Printed ball?

Again as we have mentioned the purpose of this project is not to create a 3D Print for everyone in the classroom it is to engineer ideas and solutions to meet the design brief provided by the challenge.

Resources to complete this print: Tinkercad, Maze Template .stl file, iPad, Bambu H2D, Lime green PLA.

Level of Difficulty: Medium - obviously this maze plan has been adapted.  To create an original maze from scratch with all of the working parts would increase the difficulty level of this task significantly.

Size: The print is 190mm wide and 190mm long.  It has a height of 20mm.  The walls are 5mm thick.

Cost/Price: Despite its dimensions the print uses 190g of PLA to complete the print.  This created a price point for the print of $3.81.

Timeframe:  This print took five hours and five minutes to complete.   There was minimal rafting.

What we would do differently/Next steps for the students:  There was a small gap underneath the design between the left hand side and the edge of the design.    This was only 1mm or so wide and was not easily visible but would need to be addressed to tidy the print up.   The blocks that created the ramps served a purpose but could have been more refined.

3D Printing: Ooshies and Maze Development

We are continuing to develop our range of Ooshie stands.   We've produced some larger scale stands and also some smaller ones such as the one shown left.

The smaller versions shown left suits two of the figures standing on a basic platform - the potential is for some degree of personalisation.

The stand previously featured in a post on the blog and since then the student has revisited and reconfigured the design - adjusting the name of the person that is on display and correcting some of the division aspects of the stand.

We printed the stand in a lime green version - we want to introduce some differentiation with the height of the stand and variation that it provides and also significant reducing the print time associated with this design.

Our 'Maze' challenge which was created by the example shown yesterday on the blog has led to the classroom working on their own versions and problem solving.

Our first step in the process is the creation followed by AR/VR project onto different surfaces to compare designs and creations - thinking critically about what might work, what needs to be adjusted and what we could do differently.   We are going to then choose as a class some of the best examples and print them and then provide physical examples for the students to test and experiment which should then again refine their designs.