As part of a school project highlighting non-white male scientists, the 10 year old decided to make a board game about Ada Lovelace. While the board was made with foam core, markers, glue, and printed text, the game tokens were an opportunity to flex some creative muscle. The 10 year old went through an iterative process to design a game token; building a design in TinkerCad, printing out samples, and refining to a readable, solid, and fun game token.
Test One
The first design had “Ada Lovelace” in small text, and a series of gears of decreasing size. The printed sample showed that the lettering was too small to print clearly, and the smallest of the gears didn’t print with enough detail. The goal for the next iteration is better lettering.
- Model: –
- Print Date: 2017/10/06
- Material: Inland Gray ABS 1.75mm
- Print Time: 9 minutes
- Estimated Print Time: 7 minutes
- Estimated Filament: 27.6 cm
- Slicer: PrusaControl
- 0.1mm layers
- 10% infill
- no supports
- include brim
Test Two
This iteration has a much better look and feel. Very clean, solid lines and fill, and the letters stand out nicely. The 10 y/o still needs to increase the size of the gears on the bottom of token so they print as nicely as the larger gears at the top of the token. At default scale the token measures 34mm x 17mm, leaving us space to scale up the token and still fit within the spaces on the game board.
- Print Date: 2017/10/08
- Material: Inland Gray ABS 1.75mm
- Print Time: 23 minutes
- Estimated Print Time: 14 minutes
- Filament: 57.7 cm
- Slicer: PrusaControl
- 0.15mm layers
- 10% infill
- No supports
- include brim
Test Two
This version looks great; clear letters, gears stand out cleaning. It’s time to print out a full set of tokens in different colors.
- Print Date: 2017/10/08
- Material: Inland Gray ABS 1.75mm
- Print Time: 22 minutes
- Estimated Print Time: 15 minutes
- Filament: 59.7 cm
- Slicer: PrusaControl
- 0.15mm layers
- 10% infill
- No supports
- include brim
Print a Bunch of Them
I’ve had gray ABS spooled on the printer for the better part of a week, so having dialed in optimal settings and technique for that, the token I printed in gray came out nice and clean. The copper and gold ABS are a bit of a pain to print – not terribly good adhesion to the print bed, and a bit stringy once printed. It took 4 or 5 tries to get the gold print correct; even with glue on the bed, the gold filament wants to bubble and pucker.
The PLA tokens printed clean on the first try. All-in-all a good experience for both the 10 year old and I in iterative design and refinement.
- Materials:
- Hatchbox copper ABS
- Inland gold ABS
- Inland orange ABS
- Prusa white PLA
- Inland silver PLA
- Inland gray ABS
ABS
- Print Date: 2017/10/08
- Material: various ABS 1.75mm
- Print Time: 19 – 22 minutes
- Estimated Print Time: 15 minutes
- Filament: 59.7 cm
- Slicer: PrusaControl
- 0.15mm layers
- 10% infill
- No supports
- include brim
PLA
- Print Date: 2017/10/08
- Material: various PLA 1.75mm
- Print Time: 19 – 22 minutes
- Estimated Print Time: 17 minutes
- Filament: 59.8 cm
- Slicer: PrusaControl
- 0.15mm layers
- 10% infill
- No supports
- include brim
Details
- Maker: Original
- Source: –
- Original License: Creative Commons – Attribution – Share Alike
- Model: Ada lovelace character.stl
- GCode: –
- Printer: Prusa i3 mk2