CorkPals

Description - The idea is to make an animal that has a cork in the middle and a half of the body on either side of the cork. The sides of the body are made out of 3D printed shapes that we made in class. The process is to brainstorm, research, design, and then print the body as many times as needed until satisfied.

Brainstorm - I have always been someone who likes underwater creatures, so I decided to select a creature that lives in the water. I thought of whales, squid, fish, turtles, rays, and so on. I finally decided to do a sperm whale and a squid.

The Story: Once upon a time, a sperm whale was swimming through the ocean happily. As night time approached, the whale set down by a bundle of rocks to sleep. At the same time, a squid was swimming along through the same place. It too, was sleepy. As soon as it saw the rocks, it went down to sleep. Little did it know that it was sleeping ontop of a sperm whale. When the whale woke up, it saw the little squid on top of it. It decided to let it live on top of it, as it was very kind. 

Procedure - I started by testing out different hole sizes. The first one that I tried was too big. So, I changed the size and fit it on the cork. This too, was too small. I decided that I shouldn't spend too much time on printing the holes, so I tried out different corks on the bigger hole. I finally found one that works, so I went with that.

At this point, I was ready to proceed onto building my CorkPal's body. As I stated before, one of my CorkPals was a whale. I decided that I should make sure that the design worked with my cork, so I printed out the head first. I was in a bit of a rush, so I printed in yellow, which wasn't the color I wanted.

My TinkerCad The Design Outcome!

I decided to go on with the next part of the body. At first, I only printed the tail, but then realized that because I was printing the whole whale in blue, I had to print the head as well. I stopped the print job and printed again. The final result of the Whale CorkPal is shown below.

This was the final outcome of the whale. 

The squid was the next animal that I made. I design my creature and then printed it out onto the printer. I then realized that it wasn't within the 2x2x2 limits. I then stopped the job, and printed it smaller. I also figured that the cork I took was a bit too big, so I had to wear the cork down a bit before it fit. Attached below is the TinkerCad design and the squid.

At school I got the right cork and fixed my squid. Attached below is the correct version.

SOUL Reflection

S - I think that my strength on this project was OK. My first print came out well, but my second one was rushed and I didn't take the right cork, so I had to wear the cork down. Afterwards I did fix the problem, but I think that I can improve in this area.

O - I think that I could have made the squid better, partly because of the problem I experienced with the cork

U - I think that I was able to deepen my understanding about TInkerCad, 3D Printing, organization, and time management. I think that I did a pretty good job with these

L - I encountered many limitations in this project. These include the 2x2x2 size, the cork sizes, and the need to create many prototypes. I think that I did well here.

WISCR - I chose I and S because:

I - I had to be an insightful and critical thinker throughout this project. If I didn't do that I probably would have the designs that I have now. 

S - I also had to be self motivated and work through the problems that I encountered, such as taking the wrong cork and printing the prototype holes the wrong size.