Chenderit School's first 3D Print

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Last week we brought you a blog from Anna Marriott, a teacher at Chenderit School who acquired a Cube for their Design and Technology course at TCT Show 2013. She talked us through the difficulties of getting the printer through the various bits of red tape. Now it is up an running and here she talks us through the students’ first 3D printing project.

After the difficulties we faced getting the 3D Systems Cube printer through the minefield that is bureaucracy we now have SketchUp and the Cube software installed on some pupil computers. It is time to start the 3D printing adventure at Chenderit School.

The mission we’ve set the student is to use 3D modeling software and 3D printing to create small merchandise products for a Year 9 Movie Marketing module. Over the course of this module students have come up with their own movies and designed a range of products to promote said movie.

We’ve allowed the students’ creativity to flow and informed them that only the most suitable designs would be printed out using the Cube.

Some of the students have now mastered the basics of SketchUp and have created some very interesting designs in the fairly simple to use software. The next challenge was exporting from SketchUp to Cubify and then printing. This is a unique situation as both the teacher and the students are learning as we go along.

Cubify is the software which comes with the Cube. It loads quickly and easily. Following the straightforward instructions on the software is a breeze. There are the following actions, which we figured out pretty quickly:

·      Import – find the file – done!


·      Heal – seals any gaps – we think – done!

·      Orient and scale ‐ This seems a bit trickier? Not sure how this works, but we’ll try it to see. Settings say mm so we’re guessing that the grid base equates to the print plate of the cube?

·      Centre – obvious – done.

Now to build and load it onto the memory stick ready to print off. Loading the Cube is impressively easy, you just have to follow the touch screen instructions! Print time for the trial shape was one hour and three minutes so let’s print!

Result! Our first ever Chenderit created and printed model using the Cube and quite impressive it was too! Cory Collier a year 9 was really impressed: “My design was a badge that is based on an idea I had to promote my film ’Cops & Robbers’ in my year9 Movie Marketing Module for Graphic Products.

I found SketchUp fairly easy to make using the push & pull tools. I transferred my design on Cubify, put glue on the glass and then waited 1hour 3mins! Brilliant! Really pleased with the result, but I need to file the edges now to finish it off.”