Design Challenge – MLK 2017 | Design Make Teach

Design Challenge – MLK 2017

January 5, 2017

Thingiverse recently added MLK as a Featured Collection on their front page. Designs in a featured collection receive huge increases in number of views and downloads. The problem is that the collection only features 3 designs and 2 of them are mine. When I first wrote about this issue in 2014, there were 0 relevant hits for designs related to Dr. King. https://designmaketeach.com/2014/01/16/3d-printing-martin-luther-king-jr/ The situation wasn’t much better in 2016 when searching for designs related to the Tuskegee Airmen https://designmaketeach.com/2016/01/27/tuskegee-airmen-3d-design-challenge/ or African American History https://designmaketeach.com/2016/09/24/looking-for-african-american-history-on-thingiverse/

The lack of diversity in models on design repositories such as Thingiverse is a great opportunity for students to make meaningful contributions to the world by researching, designing, making and sharing models related to Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. Please consider challenging your students to create and document new designs.

Design Challenge: Design/Make/Share: Martin Luther King Jr. Artifact
Create a historical artifact that illustrates the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

Design the artifact in 3D modeling software such as Tinkercad or Morphi.
Make the artifact using a 3D printer. Iterate the design if necessary for printability.
Share design on Thingiverse. Be sure to include a photo and key fields such as summary, category and tags.

Teacher may want students to document process with the Mini Maker Notebook – Thingiverse Edition http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:93186

My 2017 contribution is the MLK March on Washington Button with included lesson plan. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2018467 Files are available for 3D printing including a dual extrusion version, laser cutting and 2D printing.