More of a Good Problem

I've been trying to push my advanced 4th-grade 3-D design student (See 3-D Prodigy: A good problem) to up his game. His current challenge is to design something in multiple parts and assemble after printing.

His latest design is a satellite with a separate ball-pin piece that fits into a hole on the body of the spacecraft. I suspect that he made the hole exactly the same size as the pin, which will make it difficult or impossible to insert the pin. The design also has a lot of overhang on fragile pieces, which will make it difficult to remove the printing support.

The design and the toolpath visualization, including the overhang supports.

After printing it, I blue-taped the piece to a hard-copy assignment:

Assignment:

Remove the supports and assemble the object. Return the assembled object and report to me about how well the assembly worked. Be prepared to answer the following question:


How could the object be improved?

My goal is to open his consciousness to the limitations of the medium (you can't print on air) and the material (it's difficult to remove supports from tiny parts) and to the math of fitting parts together. I hope that this will motivate him to be more analytical and bring his design chops to the next level.