Hudson's Taco Truck

thingiverse

My 4-year-old absolutely loves tacos, and recently we printed out some taco holders from Thingiverse, which work great but hold only three tacos. My son thought they were the coolest thing ever and spotted some taco trucks while we were browsing on Thingiverse. His one empty taco holder was really bothering him. He said he wanted his own taco truck that looked like our three holders, with two places for tacos. Then he went, "And of course, a place for my cheese" (he's very specific at 4). Print Settings: Printer Brand: Robo 3D Printer: R1 ABS + PLA Model Rafts: No Supports: Yes Resolution: Low Infill: 15% Notes: We printed this with PLA and it took about 3.5 hours. Overview and Background: We make our projects educational while working on them, so Mom doesn't do all the work. I handed him a ruler and told him to measure our taco holders so we knew how big our shapes had to be. Then we converted our numbers from CM to MM because Mom forgot how to do it [wink]. We sketch out together what our truck will look like, then break up what shapes we see in the truck. We call them Tinkercad shapes and Photoshop shapes. We made a vector image of the back of the taco holder on its side in Photoshop. I had him convert the files using online-convert.com and import it (if I leave the windows open for him, he does this by himself), then he sat on my lap and directed me about what shapes would make the truck according to his "map". With a little help placing the shapes, I asked him why this needs to be a hole and other structural questions, such as how to use different shapes so we have fewer supports. How to find the "invisible shapes" that turn into supports? What shapes are stronger and won't break easily? How do we make this so it takes less plastic? Then we played the guessing game: how many hours will it take to print at low, med, high resolutions? We wrote down our guesses and saw who wins. The winner gets the Smarties. Lesson Plan and Activity: Measure Convert Measurements Draw the truck Decipher all shapes: negative space shapes, Photoshop shapes, Tinkercad shapes Vector Image File conversion and importing Tinkercad. Applying our shapes. Follow a design. Prepare for printing Guessing game, estimating time PRINT and PRIZE (who wins the time estimate gets the Smarties) Skills Learned: math metric system engineering computer science integrating skills design creativity technology planning