'First Christmas' Decoration - 3D Printed Design

Challenge: For student to produce a unique and personalised 3D Printed design that could be suitable as a festive ornament to hang (from a tree).
Background: As part of the challenge of having an entire classroom of 30 students produce a 3D Print before the festive season, and then buddy with another student from another classroom this student designed to create a 'first Christmas' themed decoration relating to the fact that she had a sibling born who was celebrating just that.
The student had been influenced by another design in this series but choose to create something herself from scratch.  She decided to go with the creation of a 'Father Christmas' figure, made from using some of the primary shapes available on Tinkercad to create the shape, used a circle, which then had dropped a hole into it to meet the hanging requirement and finally personalised it by adding the message in a clear basic font at the front of the design.  The student who created this was a Y5 student and this essentially was her first design independently.
Level of Difficulty: Low - however this particular design works well in conjunction with the sum of its part.   The student was wanted the print to be robust and work and purposefully did not add too much detail to the print. 
Timeframe: Two and half hours - the size was kept to a minimum so the time was reasonable.
Size: The design measured 100mm across the front, the front section featuring the 'First Christmas' message was 5mm thick, 20mm long.  The santa design was a further 95mm high and 20mm across.
What we would do differently/next steps for students: Nil - the student was extremely excited by the project and pleased with the end result, and vowed not to change anything - it was commented to her that the 'Father Christmas' looked a little like a 'Christmas Worm' however she laughed this off.

3D Printed Advanced Themed Stationary Holder

Above: Base of the design shown above.

Challenge: Student looking to push themselves by producing an advanced multi-part desk stationary holder with a 'tractor' theme, personalised for the student that it was intended as a gift for.
Background: This student has completed a number of previous projects and was looking to extend herself by producing something significants with an original creation - she made the decision early on to create this project from scratch, not relying on prebuilt models of using freely available models - this proved to be challenging as she needed things to be relative to scale and also wanted it to have a purpose that it was able to store stationary.   The wheels had to look right, but we're required to work.  She originally created an 'all in one design' featuring all the wheels, lettering and scoop for the tractor in a single design.   This design didn't have the desired affect, as the wheels and the scoop suffered from being part of a single block.   When this was discussed with the student it was redesigned featuring components - the base shown above left, this had a much more polished affect that the student was very pleased with.  To put this in context this student is ten years old.

Left: The component pieces - shown in profile - a name label of the student that it was a gift for (bottom left).   The four wheels and the 'reverse' scoop (at the rear of the tractor).    The combined print time for these additional pieces of the project was four hours - this included the significant front scoop shown below.

Left: The front scoop, the dominating feature of the design of the tractor.   This was printed as part of the component pieces of the design, with the delibrate use of the grey PLA plastic to contrast with the base (see below).   This is the print prior to removal of the 'rafting' we try and always keep this to a minimum as it essentially the waste of the print, but at times it is unavoidable.




Level of Difficulty: High - it is slightly deceptive because while the print would appear straightforward it has been built from scratch and all of the component pieces need to work in relation to each other.   There are significant additional features related to the presentation of this piece - some of these had to be redesigned several times to ensure that they were completed to the students satisfaction.   It involved considerable design and reworking, testing and adapting - for this student the design stretched them to a considerable level and should be considered amongst the most difficult challenges for a ten year old student to complete.  In addition to all these considerations the bottom line was that the deisgn needed to be functional, as it had a specific purpose and needed to work.
Timeframe: Ten hours for the base, the foundation of the tractor and four hours for the additional parts to complete the design.  There was potential to modify this to reduce the time - a combined fourteen hours for the entire design, as it usual for projects featured on this blog a 8mm nozzle was used on the printer and the infill was 20% of the total print (these are the default settings essentially).
Size:    The base of the print 100mm long, 50mm across, 60mm high at the front.   It was 135mm high at the back.   The inside storage part of the base was 35mm by 40mm and 70mm deep.   The wheels were 20mm at the back and 10mm at the front.   The main scoop extended 70mm across from the back to the front.   The other additional features were relative to that.
What we would do differently/next steps for the students:
The student was fully extended by this task and completed it to the best of her abilities.  Her intention with the deisgn was to experiment with using spray paint to complete the design, otherwise the print design, conception and production was considered extremely successful.