Makerspaces: Aotearoa New Zealand: Halloween 3D Printed Pumpkins

Wednesday, 5 October 2016

Halloween 3D Printed Pumpkins

I can't take credit for this one. I subscribe to the Newton Free Library events calendar because they have lots of great examples of STEM programming and this one particularly struck me. This October they are virtually "carving" pumpkins in Tinkercad. Thanks John Walsh!

The skills learned in Tinkercad for this project are holes, grouping, using multiple workplanes and rotating shapes. TIP: Make sure to leave plenty of room between the eyes and the mouth or it won't have enough solidity to print properly. I left 11mm distance between the end of the eyes and the beginning of the mouth.

Step 1:
I imported a pumpkin shape from the web and added a sphere from the pre-made shapes on the left sidebar of Tinkercad.

Step 2: I added a new workplane on the front center of the sphere (now orange grid appears). I used the roof for eyes and the round roof for the mouth out of the pre-made shapes. The shapes needed to be sized and rotated. Then grouped it all together.

Step 4: I made all of it a hole which is the essential "carving" of the pumpkin and moved it into the center of the white pumpkin. This would make the inside hollow for the most part and cut down on printing time. Plus it will add dramatic effect when a light is shined through it.

Step 3: I grouped everything together.

It took about 4 hours to print a 50 x 50 x 61 mm (ish) pumpkin without any supports besides the brim. (Supports are a PAIN to get out of the pumpkin this small). CURA set up was for "normal print" with print speed of 50mm/s.