If you've spent any time teaching 3D printing to students in a classroom, you know the moment.

Kids pick up the basics fast. They get comfortable clicking around in a CAD program. They start busting out their own designs. Then... they hit a wall. They get stuck. They need some more inspiration.

Getting comfortable with the software is one thing—getting from there to actually engineering something functional is a whole different story. That's the goal of this series - keeping students engaged and giving them new ideas to ponder.

MakerBot teamed up with educator Brian Bobbitt to create a video series that pushes students beyond "I made a shape" to "I made a part that works." It's built around Fusion (yep, the software formerly known as Fusion 360), but the real focus isn't button-clicking—it's getting students to see how design choices, material properties, and the print itself all tie together.

Brian is definitely the right person for this task. As a longtime Project Lead The Way educator, he's spent his career getting students to think like designers, not just operate software. Every lesson he teaches comes back to one question: how does this decision affect what comes out of the printer?

In this series, students will dig into:

• Designing parts that move, not just parts that sit there
• Why tolerances and clearances actually matter
• Printing with flexible filaments like TPU
• Building things meant to function, not just look good on a shelf

Each video builds on the last, so by the end, students aren't just modeling—they're designing like engineers.

Check out the series below!

This first video of this series from Brian uses a gyroscope to introduce one of the most important ideas in design: movement.

It’s a fairly simple project for students, but it opens up the door to understanding how clearances and constraints affect whether something actually works once it’s printed.

What students will learn:

• How to create and constrain sketches in Fusion 360
• How to use the revolve tool to build functional geometry
• What tolerances and clearances are—and why they matter
• How to design parts that move instead of fusing together
• How to take a model from CAD into a slicer for printing
• Understanding materials through real-world application

The second video in this series shifts into materials, specifically TPU. Introducing materials beyond PLA helps students start thinking about function, not just the final form of their designs. This opens the door to projects like grips, wearables, and other real-world applications that could be used to help others or make items more usable.

What students will learn:

• How TPU behaves compared to rigid materials like PLA
• When and why to use flexible materials in a design
• How to create a revolved part for a real-world application
• How to convert images into SVGs for use in CAD
• How to wrap and emboss patterns onto curved surfaces
• How to prepare and orient flexible parts for printing

This project introduces students to designing for multi-material printing by combining rigid and flexible materials in a single model.

What students will learn:

• How to design a phone case specifically for dual-material 3D printing
• When to use rigid materials like PLA versus flexible materials like TPU
• How clearances and tolerances affect the fit and function of a finished part
• Design strategies that help multiple materials bond together successfully
• How to prepare a CAD model for multi-material printing