Market day 2025 - Final Print Runs

 

It is currently the school holidays in New Zealand between term three and term four, we will be back to our regular schedule of printing at that time.   In the meantime we are preparing for the major school event for the year as regular visitors to this site will be aware - our School Market Day for 2025 is taking place on Friday 31st October.

Challenge: To produce a unique product featuring personalisation, innovation and creation using the technology available to our students.

Background: Every student in the senior school at Auroa Primary School as well as the middle school classrooms.   As we have explained before we have seven groups that are operating, one of which is the 'Bath Toys' themed group.  These designs have been previously detailed and adapted and these versions are now the personalised versions that are available to customers.   These prints and the process to create them has been detailed on posts on this blog such as here.

Level of Difficulty: Medium - the design that is shown here has undergone several revisions, however all of the key features of the design have come from the main Tinkercad interface, and the students concerned have been able to revise the design several times.   An example of this is the adaption to remove several additional features to ensure that the design is as plain as possible.   Given that there are children who could be handling the designs (although we have also looked into age appropriate toys for the group as well for instance no under two year olds) the students removed earlier features like eyebrows and details on the hat or anything that could be interpreted as sharp.

Size: 80mm across, 80mm wide/long and 60mm high.  This was the dimensions of one of four designs that had similar dimensions that were printed simultaneously on the Bambu H2D.   The students have always intended to have a group of designs, three in total, and this is intended as the biggest of the three.

Cost: The machine indicated that to print the four designs on standard default settings that 200g of filament would be used and the cost would be $5.00 (USD) to complete the print (of four).

Timeframe: The completion of the print took eight hours in total on the Bambu H2D.   The project would not have been undertaken on the Snapmaker for the reasons that the duration would have been in the range of 16 hours and that would have also called into question the ability of the machine to print all four designs without any problems.

What we would do differently/Next steps for the students: There is a couple of issues that are still needing to be identified with the range of print.   The biggest issue which is not clearly visible is under.

As can be seen in the picture shown left, the base of the design has a small hole in it, which has occurred as a result of the printing process.   This is visible in the top left had corner of the print.   The student will be needing to problem solve this issue when they return next term.    By not water proofing the design at this point the design when tested has shown to fill with water and while it does not damage the integrity of the print, the students need to seal it.

The teacher has in mind using a hot glue gun or using a water sealant on this part of the design but the students are going to undertake the research and testing when they return from the school holidays.

3D Printed Market Day: Bath Toys

 

Our groups are currently preparing for our 2025 Market Day at school, which is being held at the start of next term (so this term we are completing the process of making of the personalised items).    As we have stated before one of the groups is based around the idea of bath toys.

They are now producing their items for our school event.   They have been testing the prototypes and also looking at refining their original ideas to ensure that they are unique but also viable to be sold for a nominal fee.

As we have detailed previously with a 20% infill as a default for nearly everything we print here in most cases the 3D print as a result is buoyant and will float when placed in water.

The group came up with the idea of producing a range of Octopi called 'Ollie the Octopus' which are produced in a range shown left.   The students have created features on their designs and also added some basic accessories for the design, although this created several challenges.

One of the most pressing has been the fact that when the print floats in water if it is too top heavy it will tip over instantly as is the case with the angled top hat shown left.   Students have addressed this issue by ensuring that the print is balanced.   The same issue arose earlier this year with our boat building challenge.

This has taught the student a valuable lesson in balance.  We also have had opportunities to test the prints.  Our junior students have a morning once a week where they have a discovery time at this time they are able to create and explore.   This past Friday one of the activities involved 3D Printed designs which have featured on this blog in the past.   These designs are now several years old however there has been no affect on the prints since they have been completed and they are constantly used as a point of reference.

We included prints shown left such as the butterfly from 2022, the Amazon Dolphin from 2023.    Students were able to interact with this prints, some of which floated and some of which if they had a hole in them, as a result of the printing process,  

3D Printed Projects: Expanding on AR/VR with Tinkercad

 

We are always looking for ways to expand or use the technology in ways that interest the students.   In this example here the group for our school market day are developing unique and personalised bath toys, based on experimenting with 3D Prints.

We have spoken about the ability of the students to use their unique creations (with Tinkercad) and apply them in different contexts.    One of which we continue to develop is how we might use our CAD designs in other ways (other than 3D Printing).   These designs were increased in size so they were the size of the classroom, approximately two metres in height and two metres across.

These super size designs having been projected using Tinkercad were then screen shot to allow the students to use the image.   As part of our market day the students need to produce a series of images for videos and this is a great example to create something big and eye catching.

In another example shown left, we created another combination of AR/VR and the original student design which was projected to a massive size.  We posted the question to the students how could they interact with this? What else could they do with this super sized version? Obviously by increasing the size to this scale has meant that the students could check it for any errors or any design features.

One of the questions or challenges for this market day is to make the products be as personalised as possible.  How can the students create something that is both unique and individual.

We have detailed previously our 'Minecraft' nightlight designed group of students.   

This group have used the AR/VR feature in another way.  They have applied it to the design to see what they could potentially do design wise with their setup and their idea.   They have wanted to find a way to stage the design so that they could show someone how it might look with their name as part of the design.

They are looking at ways to project the name of an individual into a staged set-up thus allowing a prospective customer to view what they might be able to purchase with the product.   Obviously to further personalise the design the name of the person who purchases it would be prominently on display.

You can view further examples of how we have used the AR/VR feature of the Tinkercad App on the iPad here.   

Market Day 2025 - Junior 3D Printed Business Ideas

 

Our students focus is on planing and creating a viable project for our 2025 School Market Day which focusses on innovation and personailisation.

We have already demonstrated that one group of students wants to use a 'Mirecraft' themed design, which was have shared on this blog.   Our second group is currently investigating the viability of using our 3D Printers to create some range of bath toys.

We have touched on these in the past.   Our initial designs in this regard came by accident as we found to our surprise that in nearly all cases the 3D Prints that are produced on default setting (which has a twenty per cent infill) float.   You can read about our initial investigation into this when our articulated butterfly which was designed by a student was then shown to float and have the articulated 'flying' motion added to by motion the in the swimming pool.

This led to this 2023 post about floating in the school pool.    From this we developed the idea of a 'Bath Toy' business for our 2023 Market Day - you can read about this idea here.   We also have completed numerous versions of boat toys, including entire sessions devoted to the 'will it float?' concept.