Jared wins a contest!

Jared has been inventing these toys...they're plastic cubes that do different things like have wheels to roll around, have a light inside, or a small speaker, etc. They stick together with magnets on each side of the cube, so you can make a fun little machine in lots of different ways if you have a bunch of them. 
Then I saw a sign at the public library advertising that they have a 3D printer. I took the boys to see a demonstration on a Friday, and they told us that there was a design contest. The winners would get their designs printed on the library 3D printer!

The only catch is that the designs had to be submitted by 9 am Monday morning. So we had to find a free program, learn how to use it, and make our design. And decide what to design! We decided to design an ElectroCUBE casing. 

We used Tinkercad.com to design it. It's fun and free and easy to learn. Jared needed some help to figure out all the intricacies, especially because of the time crunch, but it was his idea and he did a lot of the design work.

Here is a link to Jared's design:
https://tinkercad.com/things/9sqZnlARXvn

We downloaded the design and emailed it to the library, and a week later, Jared got an email saying he'd tied for third place!

We went to pick up the print yesterday, and were kind of disappointed. It's not terribly smooth and had a lot of flaws. But we looked up how much it would cost to get it printed professionally, and the estimate is $138!!! So we'll take it! I took off some imperfections with a pocket knife and metal fingernail file. I had to file off a lot, actually, to get the lid to slide in like it's supposed to. I cut my finger open, but that's the price you have to  pay sometimes!

And of course, I took too many pictures of the thing.

This is ElectroCUBE Light, so it will have a light inside, which will show through the robot face.


That in the corner is the logo.


This is the back, which has a slide-in lid that sits flush, and there's a small screw hole and countersink to keep it shut.


This corner didn't print very well.


The inside has circular indentations on each side for the magnet to fit in.

The logo didnt' print very well, either, and this is after I hacked at it with a pocket knife.

The lid didn't print terribly smooth, either, but at least it slides in now!


The walls are not solid. When you hold it up to light, you can see the honeycomb interior pattern.