3D Printing Cost Calculation Cubes

thingiverse

This activity helps students grasp and compute the approximate expense of printing their projects using the MakerBot Replicator printer and MakerBot filament. The calculations can be adjusted to meet your specific printer and filament requirements. This project was created as a way for me to manage a valuable classroom resource and give students the opportunity to think like engineers. Standards: NGSS Overview and Background This activity can be used in conjunction with any 3D printing project that your students may be working on. I utilize it in my classroom every time that students are interested in printing out a project. You can scaffold the math requirements to meet the needs of your students. Having students explore the cost of materials ahead of printing helps them have realistic expectations of what they are allowed to make in class. I typically limit students to $2.00 per pair of students for printing larger projects. Students need to then decide whether scaling their project up/down makes sense or if they need to reengineer the design of their model to meet the cost requirements. Lesson Plan and Activity Step 1 - Explore the material usage and cost of the pre-printed cubes. In advance it may be helpful to calculate the material usage and cost of the three cubes of different sizes for students to look at. Have students examine each of the cubes and provide observations about the weight and size of each one. Have students predict the cost to print each of the cubes. Step 3 will guide you through calculating the cost in advance. Step 2 - Determine the material usage for a student-designed project. After designing a project in your favorite tool of choice (mine is Tinkercad), students should import their STL file into Makerbot Print. Use the Print Preview button to get estimates for time and material. The material estimate will be in the form of grams. Step 3 - Calculate the cost of printing the project using data provided by the teacher. From here it's time to calculate a cost estimate of the project. To do this we can use the following formula. This formula assumes that you are using standard Makerbot filament that comes in the spools of 900g and costs $48 per roll. If you are using different filament, you may want to adjust the numbers listed. You can easily solve this on a calculator by multiplying the material use (in grams) by $48 and then dividing by 900 grams. The total will be in dollars. Materials Needed The only materials needed for this project are some scratch paper and a calculator. Duration of Lesson 10 minutes Preparation 1) Make sure that your computers have MakerBot Print version 1.9 or above. This provides a material estimate that will be used to calculate the cost. 2) Optional Print out the three sets of cubes included in this project and calculate the weight and cost of each of them in advance.