Weather-Themed PIP Telescoping Fidgets

Lesson Plan and Activity

As the final project for Introduction to Engineering Design, I was given the choice of what I wanted to do. I really enjoyed making print-in-place telescoping fidgets earlier in the year, so I wanted to revisit that project. This time, I wanted to make fidgets with a common theme, similar to another project I did this year, the office supply project. I decided on a weather theme because I saw how many of the associated objects had distinct, unique silhouettes that I liked.

Design Process: Snowflake

I began by making a parallelogram in the top half of an 8 cm x 8 cm constraint box on the top plane, and made it a rhombus with a 60-degree angle at the bottom, so that when I copied it 5 more times, all of them would fit together. I offset the shape inwards until I couldn’t anymore.

Next, I extruded the sketch 0.75 cm up at a 15-degree angle draft to prevent any of the layers from escaping.

Using the offset pattern, I alternated between extruded cuts and boss extrudes to create layers that would stay inside of each other.

I wanted to create the rest of the snowflake using the circular pattern feature, so I made a construction line on the front plane to use as a reference for where to rotate around.

There was nothing connecting each shape except for one line of intersection, so I knew it would be very easy to break. I tried to prevent this by creating a triangle to extrude and fill up some space to create a better connection.

I didn’t like that solution because it left me with an extra part hanging out. I tried to create a plane at a 15-degree angle so that it could be cut in a way that aligned with the other shapes, but it was unsuccessful.

I tried to fix my problem by temporarily removing the cut extrudes and creating a rectangle to fill in the space. 

I extruded the shape and used the circular pattern feature to make two others to fill up all the space.

When I tried to perform the cut extrude on the shape, I had to make sure I cut the rectangle as well because it was wide enough to interfere with the pattern. 

After doing that and creating the rest of the extruded cuts and boss extrudes, I decided it would be easier to remove the other shapes and use a circular pattern to copy the finished design rather than going through the process I had just done five more times.

I thought I had done the best I could for the intersection at the bottom, but I didn’t like how the rectangle looked, so I tried something different.

I made a parallelogram-like design next to the original shape so that I wouldn’t need to do a separate circular pattern and so that it would be easier to tell if it intersected both sides. I also hoped that by following the way the shape went, it would stick out less.

The shape still stuck out, but it was fixed when I filleted the shape.

All I had to do was mirror everything over the top plane to prevent the layers from escaping on the other side. I also changed the original boss extrude height from 0.75 cm to 0.5 cm so that the layers could come out more.

When I first printed it, the layers fit too loosely, so they fell out. To fix this, I changed the angle of the extrudes and cuts to 20 degrees, hopefully providing more protection.

INSERT SNOWFLAKE V2 PICTURE HERE

Even though the snowflake layers don't come out a lot, they stay in one piece, and they're a pretty good substitute for maracas!

Design Process: Water Droplet

I started with a basic sketch inside an 8 cm x 8 cm constraint box, and used that as a reference to create a shape that more closely resembled a water droplet.

Because I had used splines for the top of my sketch, the software didn’t let me offset the shape. I fixed this problem by creating another sketch and nearly tracing over it using arcs instead of splines.

After that, I offset the sketch 0.1 cm until I couldn’t go any further.

I extruded the sketch 0.5 cm up and with a 15-degree angle draft.

I used the offset pattern as a guide to create alternating extruded cuts and boss extrudes, all at a 15-degree angle, resulting in multiple layers of the same shape nestled inside each other.

To finish, I mirrored everything over the top plane, preventing the layers from escaping from the back side.

The layers were very loose, so just like the snowflake, I tried changing the draft angle to 20 degrees.

Unfortunately, this model wasn't much better, so I changed the angle to 30 degrees. I didn't have enough time to print it out, but hopefully it works better.

Design Process: Cloud

Because the shape was slightly more complex than the others, I decided to use a reference image to trace over, so I aligned it with the 8 cm x 8 cm constraint box.

After tracing the image with arcs, I made a new sketch and used convert entities to just bring the outline over. I started to offset it inwards, but after a few times, I got an error message.

I thought that the problem could have been with my design, so I found a different cloud image online and used that.

I tried offsetting the sketch once, and I got… this. This is literally all I got.

I thought I might have been able to get a better result if I had made the sketch small and offset it outward. It worked, but it didn’t look great.

I tried filleting the sketch to see if I got better results, but it did not look good.

Then, I wondered what would happen if I took my original sketch and filleted the arcs. It ended up working really well, so I continued offsetting the outline until I couldn’t do it anymore.

I extruded the sketch up 0.5 cm with a 15-degree draft, used the offsets to extrude and cut the shape, and then mirrored the result over the top plane to get the final fidget.

This model didn't work because of how loose the layers were, so I changed the draft angle to 20 degrees.

Just like the rain droplet, this was still too loose, so I created a 30 degree model that I wasn't able to print yet.