3D Printing

When I think about 3D design and 3D printing I think about the future and what it will hold for my generation and the generations to come. 3D printing is just one representation of how much our technology has advanced and continues to by the day. When I heard we were going to be doing a 3D design project, I was ecstatic. I instantly looked up ideas for my earbuds, which was also part of the researching for the engineering design process. I knew my earbud holder was going to be an animal, and as I’m just beginning to do 3D design, I didn’t want to bite off more than I could chew, so I wasn’t going to do anything too hard. That’s when I decided on an owl. I pretty much knew from the beginning that, that was the animal I was going to be using

for my design. That was when I begun the Engineering and Design Process.
The Engineering and Design Process is the process in which an engineer must go through when designing and engineering a product.

The process is six very simple and easy steps. To start, you must identify the problem or need. That pretty much means you write down why you need to make this product or improve on something that was already created. In the example of my earbud holder, my earphones are always getting tangled when they’re in my pocket or even just laying around my room, so I need a holder that can fit in my pocket and prevents them from getting damaged. The second step is explore and research. This means you look up examples of your product that have already been made, or examples of what you want to make. For me, I looked up examples of earbud holders and clipart of owls that I wanted to base my design on. The next two steps is where most of the work comes in. The third step is design, imagine, plan, sketch etc. For this step, you want to draw or sketch out what you want your product to look like, which real functioning measurements, to prevent making your product the wrong size. Next, you create or build your product. In my case, this is when I went to TinkerCAD and made my 3D object on the computer, once I was done with it I turned it in, to be printed. This leads to the fifth step, trying out or testing your made product. This is when I tried wrapping different types of earbuds using my holder. My worked good therefore I had no need for the sixth step, which

is improving or redesigning the object.
As I made the owl, I had to think of a few things.

For example, I wanted the wings to be facing down, to make a traditional cute owl. Though, as I went along making it I realized if I did that, the earbuds would not be able to wrap properly, so I made the wings going up, it still ended up looking good and it functioned better than it would have if I did it a different way. Originally, I had the ears as triangles going straight up, that though I realized could lead to the earbuds sliding off, so I tilted the ears so that it would stop the earbuds from coming off. Which actually made the owl look better. After I got my owl printed, I for a good ten minutes thought my holder didn’t work, but after trying a few different ways of wrapping the earbuds I got a sense of what worked and what didn’t. For example, a crisscross method worked better so that the earbuds didn’t wrap too thick around one

area.
The redesign process helped my design in the end because I made sure to think about the redesign while doing my first design. I knew that I wanted to save time by not having to do a redesign so I had to think ahead a lot. My design did change because of the fact that it had to functional and I wanted it to look cute and accurate. If I could do anything differently I probably would’ve made something that challenged me a bit more. What I made was very simple and easy for me to make. It took me a day to sketch, and two days to make in TinkerCAD, so I was done before most people. Although in the beginning I thought anything besides the owl would’ve been too hard once I finished it in the short amount of time, I realized I could’ve done something a little more challenging. Now that I’ve done this project I’m interested to see what else I can make using 3D design. There isn’t anything specific I want to make but I would like to design something for someone on a special occasion and give it to them as a gift. Since they would know I made it myself, I feel like that would be a good gift idea. Overall, this project was really fun and a good learning experience. I got to learn more about 3D design and how it works, and in the process getting to make something that I myself like and can use.