Exploring 3D Printing and Design

There is so much going on in the world of 3D printing and it is exciting to be dipping one's toe into it. For a several years now I have been teaching basic SketchUp to middle school students and a few 4th grade classes (via the Seeking Shelter Design Challenge) . This year I will be exploring Tinkercad with students. Below is the first design that I have created in Tinkercad and uploaded to Thingaverse. This coming summer I hope to have a 3D printer to use with middle school students in the Alum Rock Art & Design Thinking Camp.

Recently I learned of a company called Sugar Lab and it amazingly prints .stl files as sugar art creations. I hope to be exploring their services in a future project! Below is a design test I created of an abstracted cherry blossom flower that could be 3D printed in sugar.

 Shapeways Creator has interesting tools and options for 3D printing (to their services). I wish it enabled export of .stl files. Maybe it does and I just have not found the function yet. Here is a design I created with Sugar Lab in mind for output.

Finally, Sculptris is a great tool for organic 3D designing. I am just beginning to explore it. Below is a wasp I am making in Sculptris. It looks like I will need to download Blender to convert the object files of Sculptris to stl files. I would like to create components in Sculptris and import them as stl files into Tinkercad to complete the forms.  The very bottom image is a Sculptris design created by my nine year old when I walked away from my computer for five minutes!