Iteration and Re-mixing with 3D printing

Just over a year ago I made a physics apparatus to help students develop a good mathematical model of acceleration. The idea wasn’t original to me, I just made it easy to make via 3d printing. My design works really well, but I wasn’t really satisfied with it. It consisted of a ring with two cones glued to the center of both sides. The side of the disk facing down always needed some clean-up prior to gluing. I let redesign ideas percolate in my brain to see if I could come up with something better. Then a couple months ago I saw a cool spinning top on the Thingiverse.

cd top

The two halves screw together and are sized perfectly to fit a CD. The instant I saw this I immediately knew I could do the same thing for my acceleration apparatus. All I needed to do was combine my idea with the nut-bolt bits from the top.

For me the ability to easily share, iterate, and re-mix existing designs  is where the power of 3D printing really hits its stride. I don’t have the CAD skills to make working screw threads and even if I did I wouldn’t have hit on using a CD as the disk. Since Gwo-Shyong Yan shared his design on the Thingiverse with a Creative Commons License I was able to not only find inspiration, but I could also build directly on his work.

After the inspiration came the iteration. Overall, I printed at least seven different versions before I was satisfied. I was trying to balance printability, usability, and overall appearance. When I was done I was pretty happy with the final design.

Of course, since I completed my original design more than a year ago I’ve already printed a full set of my old apparatus for the physics teacher in my school, so I really have no need of a new design. So, why did I spend several hours on this project?

There are really multiple reasons that all play into why I spent a Saturday working on this. I wanted to create a thing that other teachers could use with their students. I also wanted to add back to the community of Makers so that someone else might find inspiration to create something cool. But really I did this just to see if I could. I did it for the sheer joy of making a thing. That others might find this useful or interesting was really secondary. This makes me wonder, how do we engage our students to embark on things like this? How do we get them interested enough in doing a thing that they are forced to learn the bits they need to get it done? If you have any insights into this, or really any thing else please share them with me in the comments or via twitter (@falconphysics).

If you’re interested, you can find my final design on Thingiverse. You can also find links to my Tinkercad projects there in case you want to modify my designs.

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