T1W7: TinkerCAD and 3D Printing

Now Meeting in the Innovation Studio - Primary School Building Room 120!

We still have all the night lights to laser cut, but while we are waiting for time on the machine I wanted us to get started on the next and final project of the first term - 3D printing key chains designed with TinkerCAD. TinkerCAD is a relatively simple but powerful 3D CAD (computer aided design) program that can create 3D shapes we can print on the 3D printers. It runs in a browser so you should be able to use it on your Lowell Chromebook, but I bet it uses a lot of memory so you may need to close your other browser windows.

I have set up a TinkerCAD classroom, you will need to set up an account if you haven't already, or we can pick a nickname for you in class. Once you are in TinkerCAD, if you have never used it or other 3D CAD programs before, get started with the Starters tutorials that will show you how to get around in TinkerCAD's 3D space.

Once you can navigate in TinkerCAD, move on to the Lessons tutorials . There are a lot of these, and you can do the ones that interest you the most. But the goal is to learn how to make a keychain with a hole, a shape of your choice, and the text of your choice on the shape. Not very complicated, and there is even a keychain tutorial that will let you make one step by step, but I hope that we can be a little more creative on our own designs. Next class we will focus more on the keychains, but for this class while we are finishing the night lights I just want everyone to use their time to get some practice with TinkerCAD.