A personalized coin for kids

3D Fabrication
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I’m designing a 1 to 2 hour intro to 3D modeling and printing workshop for kids in 4th through 8th grade. The idea would be to teach kids who normally don’t get access to these kinds of resources or training - give them a taste of what is possible. I thought this would be the group to ask.

The activity I have in mind is creating their own “currency” - putting their own profile on a coin. This has the benefit of being small and flat, so that there is a chance of completing a print in a reasonable amount of time. But it has to be fast, fairly easy and very repeatable. The printing part is the easier part - I’m pretty sure I’ve got that covered. The trickier part is capture/modeling.

As an example, we could use Skanect or Scenect with a Kinect for Windows to capture a model of their head. We’d then need to use 3D modeling software to squish the head side to side so we end up with a moderate relief profile. Cut a clean neckline and probably cut it vertically in half so we only keep the profile of interest. That should leave a flat surface that we can place on a simple model of a coin. Then export, scale, slice and print.

But Skanect is just a for-instance. It can be finicky and getting a great scan from fidgety kid might be challenging. But it’s likely to be more successful than 123D Catch. Are there better low-end options? Of course we need to end up with a nicely complete and normalized mesh that can be pulled into some simple 3D modeling software. We have experience with PTC Creo, but that has too high of a learning curve. What’s a good tool that is easy to use and could be used to squish and Boolean-cut the model? Meshlab seems a bit technical for mesh capture and cleanup. I’m not sure products like Tinkercad or 123D Design would be able to load custom meshes and execute these operations. Plus we won’t always have internet access, so the tools need to be installable.

Oh and of course we have almost no budget for this… but we do have a Kinect and we do have laptops available.

Anyhow, if you have ideas for a good set of tools and workflow that could make this process easy, replicable and transportable, please share your knowledge.

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Unless you’re going to make these “coins” (medallions really, says the Secretary of Numismatics International) quite large, I doubt you’re going to get much more than one level of relief. In that case, you might be better off going with a silhouette, which should require nothing more than a profile photo. The Dutch coins of Queen Beatrix were done rather like that, although Heaven knows why.

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That might be a great way to simplify the whole process, particularly for the younger kids. While the actual printed medallion might be limited in relief, the kids would still be able to keep the digital model, which would be nicer to have in full relief.

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