Challenge: Using creativity, innovation and personalisation students from a Y3/4 classroom create a unique product for our school market day.
Background: This group had a number of challenges that occurred during the project. When we started brainstorming ideas as we have established a standard PLA default infill of 20% means that nearly all basic designs will float - and motion can easily be achieved. As documented in the past we had a 'flying' butterfly that was created and used in 2023 as documented on this blog
There was several attempts and versions of this project to try and get the designs to the point that the students were happy with it and ultimately they were not able to achieve this. The pivot that took place at the last moment with this was to revert to a design that was located online (Thingiverse again as we had done with locating material related to Minecraft with the nightlight.)
This meant the students were able to meet the obligations for the school Market Day (based on the orders that they had received) and produce a print that met expectations of the product. They had to move away from the larger designs which they had been working on, which had limits to its ability to be water tight.
Level of Difficulty: Low- the group spent several months working on this design and ultimately opted for essentially a design that someone else had created. Ideally they would have gone through the process of linking and used this for their own design. The students did alter some of the designs (including adding a top hat for instance as shown in the photograph below).
Size: We marketed three different sizes of print based around the printing time there the units took between one and three hours to print. The smallest print had 70mm tentacles and a 30mm head put to the larger print which had 100mm tentacles and a 50mm head. We were limited with the number of large prints that we were able to produce.
To enhance the presentation of the units for sale on the Market Day the decision was made to display the units in a small glass fish tank that allowed the units to 'float' and be on display.
Cost/Profit: We looked at marketing the large Octopi for $3.00 and had a estimated cost to produce of $1.70. With hindsight these could have been price higher as we found that something of a demand for them, and of all them were sold out in a short space of time when the event started.
The medium and small prints made a relatively smaller profit, again we would probably have charged a larger amount for these as they sold our quickly.
Timeframe: Three hours for the largest Octopus, two hours for a medium and one hour for the small. We needed to produce a large amount of these designs so printing
What we would do differently/next steps for the students: This has been more or less addressed in the course of the post, as noted. The linking would have been the biggest long term aspect of the designs, but while the group investigated they decided against it.
As a reminder you can search this blog for the project by searching for 'Octopus' or 'Bath Toys'.
