KS2 Art and Design / DT: Designing packaging for soft fruit using 3D software

Marie Adeyemi:

Hi, I'm Marie, and I'm a mechanical engineer working on a nuclear energy project. Today, I'm meeting some children at St Peter's primary school in Portishead and I thought I would share some lovely raspberries with them. The only problem is that they are all squished!

Children:

Ugh!

Marie:

Our design challenge today is to research, design, and make a better package for our raspberries. What do you think the problem is with the packaging?

Girl:

I think the packaging needs to be a bit stronger because it might not be strong enough to hold all those raspberries.

Marie:

So, what we're going to do now is look at other packaging. I like this one. It's got an interesting shape inside. Do you think that's good for our raspberries?

Neil:

It's not THAT good because the raspberries could slide around in it.

Marie:

Yeah, they could slide inside here. This is another rectangle shape, but this one's a little bit different.

Girl:

I think that box is good because it has a window and you can see the raspberries inside of it.

Marie:

Oh, I like this. It slides in and out.

Girl:

I think it's a good idea to have a slidey-out box because then you can see if the raspberries are fresh or not.

Boy:

I think the design is good because, if you've got a friend, you can, like, push it open and say 'Would you like a raspberry?'

Marie:

In all these different designs, what do you think's really important about them?

Girl:

I think it's good for the packaging to be attractive.

Girl:

I think the box should be made out of recyclable materials, so then it's better for the planet.

Marie:

We split into two teams to model our ideas.

Girl:

So, now we need to think of a way of getting the raspberries in the box safely.

Marie:

The girls have decided that a row of spikes would be a good way to support the raspberries. The spikes will be made by a 3-D printer. Iain Major is an expert in using these new machines that print solid objects.

Iain Major:

A bit like a hot glue gun, it's going to squirt plastic down and the plastic is going to go down in layers, and each layer is twice the melting point. So, it melts the previous layer and then they stick together as they cool down and become one object.

Marie:

The printer is controlled by its own modelling software. While the girls work on the 3-D printer, the boys are designing a box for the raspberries. Packages are often made of a single piece of folded cardboard called a net.

Marie:

OK, so if I wanted to recreate this net using 2-D technology, do you know how I could do it?

Boy:

Well, on the computer we can make the net bigger, different shapes or sizes.

Marie:

To combine the 3-D printed rows of spikes and the net that will contain them, the boys need some precise measurements from the girls.

Girl:

We need to measure the biggest and the smallest raspberry. My biggest is two centimetres.

Girl:

Same.

Girl:

And my smallest is one centimetre.

Boy:

We need to know how tall it's going to be altogether.

Girl:

1.9 centimetres.

Girl:

But if you've got the raspberry on top of it, it might be a little bit more.

Neil:

So, altogether the height will be 2.5.

Boy:

This is our final design. We've got a picture here of raspberries exploding, our name and our mascot, Robbie Raspberry.

Marie:

Next, we print, cut out and fold our net.

Girl:

It's amazing because it's not printing 2-D, it's actually printing 3-D.

Marie:

Now it's time to combine the 2-D and 3-D elements of the design.

Iain:

I think this is a fabulous design, I really do. The raspberries are actually sat on little spikes individually which is going to make sure that they don't bash into one another. Each raspberry has its own space. I think it's a very marketable product.

Marie:

I think it's a great design and you all came together as a team. Teamwork's really important in engineering. We've achieved all our packaging design aims. Well done teams!