Putting the 3D printer to work

Ben is studying 'Product Design' as one of his A levels at school.  Very usefully, he bought a second hand 3D printer, using his pocket money, to help with his studies.  His room is festooned with numerous 'dragon' characters from 'Berk' printed using the printer!

Ben has put his design skills to work on the 'Tidy up the Toys' and ' Feed the Fish' challenges.  He printed out various 'cubes' for the 'Tidy up the Toys' challenge.

He also designed a mechanical 'stacker/scoop' attachment to allow Dan-ED to pick up and stack the cubes in the 'Tidy up the Toys' challenge.

Ben's attachment is partly made of Lego technic, with a Lego power function motor lifting a scoop 3D printed from PLA filament.  The attachment, when 'folded', fits within the general challenge rules extending the basic chassis by no more than 100mm.  When the scoop is lowered the overall dimension is still less than 500mm, remaining within the max size limitation.

The first iteration of the scoop was too weak to function properly but was useful for trying out the concept of scooping up the cubes and then lifting into place.

Ben's next iteration included some changes to optimize the scoop design, making it more robust and including features to keep the cubes in place once scooped up.  Solid works 3D CAD software was used together with slicing software to prepare for 3D printing.  The resultant design took about 14 hrs to print.

The 'scoop and stack' concept works well in theory!