Keep your eyes peeled for a slew of new chibi designs popping up on YouMagine over the weekend.

The Ultimaker team invited four schools to participate in the Ultimaker Gumball Challenge.

• River Bend Middle School, Virginia
• Saint Ann’s School, New York
• Comstock High School, Michigan
• Advanced Learning Center, Utah

Each school was sent 1000 gumball capsules and some 3D-printing filament. Students designed and printed the models and decorated their machines.

All of the money collected in these machines will be donated to support STEM initiatives at the schools, and whichever school sells the most prints will also win an Ultimaker 2+ 3D printer!

You Can Play Along From Home!

This Gumball Challenge joins a bold lineage of fun projects making use of dime store toy dispensers in combination with 3D printing, in particular starting with The Incredible 3D Printing Gumball Gallery art project from DesignMakeTeach who helped to shape this challenge and drew one of his local classrooms into the mix.

We hope that readers and Maker Faire Bay Area attendees both will go home inspired to try challenges like this with their own classrooms and communities!

Here’s the core challenge: “What original 3D printed designs could you create to fit inside a tiny two inch (five centimeter) gumball capsule?”

Want to encourage creativity and teach those new to 3D printing about design constraints? By placing a constraint on size, you encourage creativity and to problem solving. Challenge participants to design whatever they want, or choose a theme.

More Gumball Capsules to Come!

Continue to check back for the designs labeled “gumball” on YouMagine in the coming weeks to see all of the student designs, and read more at: www.ultimaker.com/gumball

Visit these designs on YouMagine.com!