4th Grader Science Fair Project: Stronger 3D Printing

Every year, my kids participate in our school district's science fair. This past year (March, 2016), my 4th grade daughter - working on her 5th science fair since Kindergarten - decided to use 3D printing as her target.

After some discussion with her 3D printing-crazed dad (ahem), she decided to test the strength of 3D Printing using different print orientations.

The problem she was working on in her project was how to print stronger 3D printed objects.

She witnessed an issue I had with some hooks I printed for my pegboard a while back, and she generally thought that was an area that could use some experimentation.
Yes - I helped lead her in this direction - no doubt about it.

Her hypothesis was that the vertical layers (layered upwards along the z-axis) were not as strong as the horizontal layers printed along the x- and y-axis. She has seen many failed prints (of mine!) and has gotten familiar with the difference between the upward layers of a print and the horizontal layers.

Two test links - one horizontal, one vertical

I'll leave all the details to the slide deck - embedded below - which she made and printed for her poster board for the 2016 Science Fair.

Computer on the Wall - a Middle School Maker project

I participate as a parent in our middle school Tech Club - the TechDetectives. The 8th graders in the club came up with this great end of year project idea - they wanted to take apart one of the lab computers and re-mount all the parts on the wall so that future students could easily see all the parts of this working computer. It was something they saw done on YouTube.
I've been calling it the "CoW" (Computer On the Wall).

I loved this idea - and quickly volunteered to help out after school - knowing we didn't have enough time in tech club before the end of their graduating year to finish it. As I described in a few posts previously, this project also turned into a great opportunity for some #3DPrinting solutions.

The Take-Apart

This was how it all started - taking the computer apart. We chose our victim (desktop PC), with the guidance of the group's teacher leader, from the 20 or so computers in the Tech classroom. We decided that we'd almost certainly get approval for this, especially since the school recently went 1:1 with Chromebooks, so we just dug right in. Pretty much anyone has fun taking things apart - so the students immediately started unscrewing, unclipping and disconnecting wires. They took pictures as we progressed in case we (or someone else) decided to cancel this project - so we could figure out how to put the computer back together again.

We created a hand-drawn map of the wiring so that we could re-connect parts in the right place on the mother board. There were hardly any challenges at this step - as desktop computers in large cases are pretty much made for upgrading - which means removing and replacing parts.

The Board Design

We planned on hanging the parts on the wall on a board - so it was important to figure out how much space we needed so we could acquire a board of the right dimensions to hold the parts. We talked a bunch as a team about different challenges - like how and where to run the wires, where to put the switches and plugs that were attached to the original computer case, and more. We also brainstormed a bit on added features we might want to add - like cool lighting or signs. In the end we stuck mostly to basics - except for the Big Red Button, which I'll explain below and was highlighted in a separate post.

We laid all the parts on the board which is about 14" x 28". Once we were comfortable with the layout, we started looking for ways to secure all these parts. The Motherboard - the centerpiece of the computer - looked simple. It has holes for mounting with screws. But all the other large parts - Hard Drive, Power Supply, CD Drive - had no obvious mounting method. We would need straps or strong glue or....or... 3D Printed Brackets! Oh, isn't that always my motive... See the next section for more.

While we planned to have some cool lighting on the board, in the end we really just ran out of time and settled for placing the existing LED on/off lights inside the Big Red Button box. It looks cool, but as of this writing still has a slight short circuit which needs to be fixed before hanging the project on the wall.

3D Printed Parts

There were a few things that we decided 3D Printed was truly a great option. I have previously posted about all of these - so  I'll point to those posts here and keep it short.

1 - Brackets for mounting - this allowed us to make custom fit brackets for each part.

2 - Speaker Box - without the computer case, the speaker had no home. It was like a turtle without a shell, until we created the perfect home for it.

3 - On/Off Switch - aka The Big Red Button - we made something seemingly boring, the focal point of the whole project. This was complex, but achievable.

The Result

This was a great project, with lots of hands-on mechanical interactions, some electrical connections, a bunch of testing of the equipment after mounting and re-wiring and even some painting (the board ;). The team was quite proud and presented the CoW (Computer On the Wall) to the school as their tech club legacy.

We're expecting to have it hung in the computer lab over the summer, clearly marked with "Class of 2015" and perhaps encouraging a tradition of each class taking apart one more computer each year and leaving their mark.

Building Bridges on the 3D Printer

Bridge building has been a pretty common topic used in school science and physics lessons over the years - probably because it is a fun way to explore force and weight distribution, even math and material strength. I thought it would be fun to create a 3D Model of a suspension bridge to give science teachers a starting point to combine 3D Printing with these lessons. I also think this world is in desperate need of many more bridge builders, so kids should learn how to build an actual bridge as early in life as possible! (yes, I'm kidding).

The 3D Model - Multi-part again

Given my obsession with multi-part objects, I figured I should also try that here. Actually - the motivation is more of a practical goal of "getting complex things to print". Most 3D Printers still cannot print everything you design so easily - they specifically have issues with something called (ironically) "bridging" - where there is some part of an object which has not supporting material to the ground. In the bridge project - no surprise - there would be a long span which has no support from the bottom. So - printing the bridge in parts (which is actually how real bridges are made, right?) seemed logical and practical.

The Design

I set out to design a suspension bridge which was visually modeled after the Verrazano Narrows bridge, in Brooklyn, NY. This bridge opened in 1964, and has some really interesting facts around it's construction and use (including being the starting point for the NYC Marathon). But I didn't set out to mimic it's relative dimensions - I just estimated by eye what would look good. I decided to construct it in 3 parts - the tall stanchions, the short stanchions and the cables. You can see how some of the parts look on the 3D Printer bed to get a better sense of what the parts are.

The Results

The snap together parts don't work all that well yet - but this first version is just a prototype of something I might make better over time. The scale of it - 2 spans measuring approx 8 inches wide and 3 inches tall - made it difficult to make sturdy. But this first version at least looks pretty good when put together. I will definitely glue it to make it stronger.

Let me know in the comments if you have ideas on how to use this in a real school lesson or how you think I could change the model to make it more useful or interesting. I've got plenty of time to do stuff like that (uh... not really). I'll post this model soon in a place where anyone can download it.