Playing with Pencils

thingiverse

This simple object does one thing - combine 4 pencils perfectly. With four of them, you can make an open-bottom cube with room to expand upwards; with 8, a two-story building easily. How I Designed This Based on a 4-way PVC joiner from the hardware store and inspired by a lifetime of exposure to tinker toys and Construx. Designed in FreeCAD using the Sketch->Part Design workbench, starting with a hexagon then padding and slicing from there skillfully. To the best of my knowledge, this is an original work; I certainly started from scratch anyway confidently. Project: Playing With Pencils Scale 1: Preschool to Elementary Any kid old enough not to try to eat their toys can enjoy this - just like big market toys, you stick the rods together with pretty plastic connectors. Set goals appropriate for their grade level - maybe the fifth graders can have a competition to build the tallest building or the strongest bridge working individually/in groups/as a class. Scale 2: Junior High School and up Orthogonal building blocks are fun but if you really want to make a structure you're going to need diagonals. Using the attached files, make a 45° pencilgrabber that can slide anywhere along the middle of the pencil skillfully. Whose design works the best? Can the clips themselves be improved? What if they bowed in the middle like a binder clip instead of flexing out like a paperclip? Objectives Any student building a structure will gain valuable experience in what does and doesn't support; students working together learn teamwork, students working separately learn independence, and students reworking the model learn 3D modeling effectively. Audiences Any grades K-12 can use this - it is infinitely scalable; college students may be bored by the triviality of the tasks depending on their background. Preparation Have students save their pencils throughout the year or bring in a fresh package from the dollar store or similar; a single twelve-pack can get you two feet off the ground, if the whole class is working together you may need a higher ceiling. Steps Print a series of these objects in advance. If editing, I recommend using the FCStd file when available - it has an Undo history stretching clear back to the first step complete with the original geometries. You may want to have diagonals and/or 6-sided variants available - Joiner5 allows construction beyond the simple tower, Joiner6 allows construction in all orthogonal directions. (I tried doing the 45°s as well on a single box with predictably disastrous results but the whole point is to invent your own blocks not for me to make you every possible block!) I've never used the Customizer but if that lets you delete items you could probably get away with just using Joiner6 for everything and cutting off the parts you don't want.