3D Printed Spinning Top Exemplar

 

Challenge: To produce a unique and personalised '3D Printed Spinner' that is able to be spun and last the longest in the class.

Background: This came from the Tinkercad challenges. The template came from this page as the idea was not something that the students had considered prior to that.

Level of Difficulty: Low-Medium.   With the template available for the students to build onto everyone can essentially complete the task - the detial comes in the personalisation and once all the students have started testing the spinning tops we want the students to focus on the variables that will make a difference to the different tops ability to spin for as long as possible.

Size: The idea of printing an entire unique class set of anything can be daunting but this design measures 60mm high and is 40mm wide at the main base part.  That leads in nicely to the....

Cost/Price: This print took 10g of plastic to make and the cost suggested via Bambu Lab (which tends to be very accurate) was 40c (NZD).  There was a small amount of rafting associated with the bottom of the top.  

Timeframe: Forty minutes to complete the task using the Bambu H2D Printer.   

What we would do differently/next steps for the students: As we have mentioned the intention with this is to run a series of class competitions around the students ability to spin the tops for the longest time.   We want to lead a discussion about balance and weight, relative to this print and allow the students the opportunity to develop their ideas.  Also as part of the process we want to look at time and recording the length of the spinning, using our iPads to do so and considering how we might record this information.   We also want to look at technique etc. so this project is going to potentially make a nice finish to the year for the students.

Tinkercad Design Challenge: Spinning Top

 

We have spoken at length on this blog on the technology that the students use (iPads as we are a 1:1 iPad School and an Apple Distinguished School) and that on our iPads we primarily use Tinkercad for creation of 3D designs.

We also enjoy looking at the resourcing that is available on Tinkercad and one particular challenge at the moment has the attention and the imagination of the students.     

Under the resources tab on the Tinkercad website there is a range of challenges and activities for creation.   The 'spinning top' challenge is currently live, and will be until next month.  The template is available online which allows the students to build a design extremely effectively.   

Our students have spent time using the prototype and experimenting with different designs - the initial print is extremely reasonable timeframe which has meant that prototyping has been relatively easy.

The latest version designed by our students shown left took just over forty minutes to print.   It was completed using the Bambu H2D printer.   It measures 60mm in total length and is 30mm across.  The handle for the spinning is 20mm from the top.  

This design has taken an idea that the students like using motion to something practical that they are enjoying playing with as they discuss engineering ideas and we have tried to start conversations about the concepts of force, balance and personalisation and how this might affect how it works.   We are already talking about having some kind of competition to see how long the best designed and engineered spinning top is going to spin for (which of course will lead to discussions based around time and recording this accurately).

All things being equal during the coming week we will be able to print either a full set or very close to a full set of the student creations of these before we begin a testing process.