3D Printing with Sand - My Steps and Stages Visual Diary by Sophia Scopelliti

Introduction

sophia_scopelliti — 2025-06-17 17:26:47 UTC

3D Printing with Sand

As I work on my creation, I will document each major step of the process. I will use purple pads for the planning steps and yellow for building steps.
For each step, I will:
- Add a photo or video showing my progress
- Write a brief description of what I did
- Include any challenges I faced or solutions I found
The posts are added in chronological order from left to right.
Each post has a step number included.

Planning Step 1: Acquire Materials

sophia_scopelliti — 2025-06-17 17:32:19 UTC

Based on the Activity Plan, I collected the following materials:

Colored craft sand - bought at Michaels
White school glue - bought at Michaels
Clear plastic cup or food storage container - already had at home
Measuring spoons - already had at home

Planning Step 2: Watch a model

sophia_scopelliti — 2025-06-17 17:47:32 UTC

I watched this video before starting to create so that I could plan better what I wanted to create.

Planning Step 3: Draft objects

sophia_scopelliti — 2025-06-17 17:52:21 UTC

Here, I drew out the objects I want to create. Next year, I will be teaching a Math 8 Seminar, which is designed to help support students in 8th Grade Math by slowing down and focusing in on specific parts of the curriculum. There is a unit on volume, so I am thinking it would be cool if students could create their own cones and cylinders.

Making Step 4: Set up materials

sophia_scopelliti — 2025-06-23 18:51:44 UTC

First, I set up all of the materials and added then thin layer of sand to each cup. The cylinder will be in the blue cup to the left, and the cone in the red cup on the right. The three cups on the left side of the photo are the extra sand I will use for the layers.

Making Step 5: Adding the first layer

sophia_scopelliti — 2025-06-23 18:52:55 UTC

Here, I added the first layer in each cup. Notice - the circles are small. The sand quickly started to spread onto the glue.

Making Step 6: Adding More Layers

sophia_scopelliti — 2025-06-23 18:55:46 UTC

I quickly realized this was not going to turn out as I expected. The glue was spreading outward, making the diameters longer than I wanted. Not to mention, my shaky hands were not making nearly close to perfect circles.

I also decided to alternate colors each layer to see what that would reveal in the final product.

Making Step 7: Trying to Troubleshoot the Cylinder

sophia_scopelliti — 2025-06-23 18:57:30 UTC

The "circle" was quickly losing its shape, so I started to create smaller circles inside the outer circle to try and help it keep its height.

Making Step 7: Trying to Troubleshoot the Cone

sophia_scopelliti — 2025-06-23 18:59:20 UTC

The cone was really getting out of hand; as you can see it almost looks like it has a triangular base. At first, I was just trying to make each circle layer smaller than the previous, but around layer eight, when it was really spreading, I decided to just try to make the same size circle each time to try to balance out the glue spreading.

Making Step 8: 15 layers in!

sophia_scopelliti — 2025-06-23 19:04:01 UTC

Trying not to get discouraged... I decided to pause here and wait a couple minutes to see if that made any difference. I am thinking about WHY things went wrong and HOW I could still make this a productive, educational experience for my seminar students.

Making Step 9: Final layers.

sophia_scopelliti — 2025-06-23 19:43:51 UTC

When I went back to add more, it seemed like the figures were a bit more defined. I decided to add only 5 more layers each. With the cylinder, I do have hope that it will be relatively uniform, although with a larger diameter than intended. For the cone, I think it will look more like a smaller cylinder on top of a larger cylinder, and I do not think it is centered on the top but... I tried.

Stay tuned for final pics on Wednesday evening!