Technology Tues: 3D Printing From a Pro

This week my 4th grade students were treated to an introduction to our 3D printer from a pro.  Travis Howk, a senior at Hendrix College in Arkansas, and the son of one of my very good library friends, explained 3D printing to my 4th graders better than I ever could!  Travis is a math and physics major but got involved in 3D printing when he discovered his campus had one.  He learned about it by watching and asking questions and pretty soon was teaching others how to use it.

This week, he spent an hour with each of my 4th grades. First, talking about what 3D printing is and showing them actual models of things he printed (all plastic, of course).

  Then he rocked their world when he told them you could 3D print pancakes, chocolate, clothes, and a house in less than a day.

Travis encouraged questions and answered all of them.  From the silly ones about 3D printing characters and logos to very thoughtful ones like "What will happen to construction workers if houses can be 3D printed?"

Students then logged in to Tinkercad where Travis walked them through creating a name plate.

 The students were so excited and proud of their designs.  

The 4th grade teachers and I am thinking of a way we can use the 3D printer with their research project coming up later in the spring.

We had a great day of learning from an awesome young man.

A Real World 3D Print: Part 2

So when Part 1 left off, our technology coordinator and I had spent 3 hours trying out different processes to print Braille keychains with students.  At first, we thought that each one could make a letter of the alphabet to start and then they could use each other's letters to make the key chains. Too involved! We finally decided that the easiest thing would be to have them copy the original braille cell I made and remove the dots, just as I did.

I had spoken to a 5th grade teacher about doing it with her math class of about 20 kids.  She was super excited.  The kids came to the library and I had Michelle explain a little bit about what Ivan had been going through.

She also brought some Braille shapes on paper so the students could feel what it was like.  She told the students that Ivan was at a school in Austin learning how to adapt to being blind. I then explained about the original keychain that I had made and how we wanted to make more for the other students at the school.

We brainstormed a list of positive, encouraging words that we could put on the keychains (I forgot to take a picture of that).  Word like: smile, hope, joy, just do it, cheerful, love, shine, etc.  The students picked a word and planned out what the word would look like in Braille.

Once the teacher or I checked their Braille, they could begin using Tinkercad to design the keychain.

When they were finished, the teacher or I checked their work to maker sure the keychain was the right thickness, no shapes were poking through the bottom, the hole went all the way through and that the dots were raised to the right height.  The students then wrote the title of their design on a list so I could begin printing them.  

After they were printed, I sent them home with Michelle one weekend so Ivan could "proof-read" them for us to maker sure the keychain said what it was supposed to say.  She was kind enough to record a video for the students...

The students were super excited about this product and really proud of themselves when they had their finished keychain in hand.  They knew they had done something special for the students at the school and felt good about that.  

A Few Things I've Learned While Using the 3D Printer

Just a few things I learned while making the Decade Coins with 5th grade.

1. Kids are WAY more creative and better at Tinkercad thank I am.  I have always had trouble visualizing things.  I can not picture how furniture should look in a room.  I actually have to see it in there or move it around.  I had a very difficult time making a sample coin to show 5th grade. I was worried how the kids would be able to connect the different shapes to create what they wanted or if they would get frustrated.  They were much faster and much better at combining the shapes than I was. 

2.  There are different kinds of filament.  Who knew?  Not me.  My 3D printer came with a role of filament and when I was running low, I emailed the vendor that the printer was purchased from and asked him for a quote on white filament for the Afinia printer.  He sent it and I bought it.  

3.  Different filaments have different settings on the printer. When I loaded it and printed for the first time the coin would NOT come off the raft.  It was stuck on there like super-glue.  I thought maybe I had messed up the calibration or the nozzle height so I reset those and printed again.  Still stuck. I emailed Afinia support - which is great by the way.  They sent back some instructions and still stuck.  I went through the whole set up one more time and happened to notice a drop down in front of ABS and remember seeing something about ABS filament.  I looked at the filament that I loaded and it said PLA.  I changed it in the drop down and presto-chango, worked like a charm. I really don't know what the difference is between the ABS and PLA but I found this article if you are interested.

4.  Different filaments take coloring differently.  After I made my sample coins, I tried coloring them with Sharpie marker.  Keep in mind this was on the ABS filament - no good.  The marker bled and looked horrible.  Crayons were no good either.

Sharpie

Crayon

Colored pencils worked great on the ABS filament.

Colored Pencils

Once I loaded the accidently PLA filament, the Sharpie markers looked awesome!  The PLA is a little shinier and maybe seals better so the sharpie doesn't bleed.

Sharpie

Technology Tuesday: Decade Research and 3D Coins

You know those crazy ideas that come to you in the middle of the night?  The ones that wake you up and then you can't go back to sleep because you are thinking about them?  Well, that is how this research product came about and boy was it fun.  I have just recently received a 3D printer and have been trying to figure out meaningful ways to use it with classrooms.  I woke up in the middle of the night one night after talking with a 5th grade teacher about the decade research made into an iMovie product that we have done for the last few years.  I also had 3D printing on my mind and I guess the two things just blended together and "Voila" the Decade Commemorative Coin was born.

The next day, I talked with the 5th grade teacher and explained my idea.  Students would do a decade "exploration" where they listed important events, people, inventions, famous firsts, ect from the decade and then choose one of those things to research more in depth and create an image on the top of a "coin" to represent the decade. Now this is the teacher that I have written about before (see this post).  She is slowly becoming more comfortable with technology, but I knew as long as we were in it together she would be on board.  I told her about the tinkercad website and that it was easy to use, but that I really had no idea what the students would come up with or be able to design (just keepin' it real).  Well, we were totally surprised by the creativity and outcome the students produced!

We spent one day doing the decade exploration using books that I borrowed from the middle schools. The next two days, the students chose their specific idea they would research more thoroughly using books, Britannica online and other websites that I had listed on my library webpage.

Then the fun part... I pulled them all together on the 4th day and briefly explained how tinkercad worked.  We were using chromebooks, so the students were able to loging to tinkercad with their google account.  I gave them the specifications of how big and think t make the coin and showed them how to group object and layer them on top of the coin. I also had them name their designs with their first name and the object and make it public so that I could find them and then print when they were finished.  We talked about the different shapes they could use and how they design couldn't be too detailed because of the small space we were working with.  

Then they set to work... As with any project, some students grasped using tinkercad right away and some needed a little more assistance but over all we were super pleased with their finished coins.  I was shocked at how detailed some of the students were able to get their coins and the things they figured out without me telling them. 

My filament is white, so I knew we were going to want to color them somehow.  We tested a few things and found that colored pencils worked best until I accidently ordered a different filament when I was getting low and then Sharpies worked better (see this post about things I learned).

 

Each coin took about an hour to print so as I finished a couple, I would take them down to the class where they waited anxiously to see if it was theirs'.  They colored the coin and wrote a little bit about the event pictured.

  

After printing the first couple, I realized that I was going to have to go in to each design and make sure they had layered properly and there were not spaces between the layers, layers coming through the bottom of the coin, or that the layers were not too tall.  That part was a little time consuming, but well worth it to the see the results.