Owen chose a learning fair topic that was fairly difficult this year. His topic was “how to make gel pens.” This was difficult because it was challenging to find any books and resources on this topic to research, let alone have the supplies to create a gel pen. We found some articles and a couple books and some videos to help us. We attempted to make the gel ink from a recipe we found, but this attempt failed multiple times because the ink was too watery or did not have enough color to show up. We opened up a pen and removed the refilled tube and filled it with our ink, hoping it would reach the roller ball, But we could never get the pen to actually work. This happened a couple of times. It was frustrating research, trial and error, over and over again.
We determined it was too difficult to create our own refill. So we adapted the process slightly. We found a 3-D print template for a clicker pen body. It fit G2 gel pen refills, so we were able to pull the refill tube and spring out of existing gel pens and put them into the newly 3-D printed pens, and this worked. At the store, the G2 refills cost roughly 5 dollars apiece and Owen was determined to make 3-D pens for everyone in his class. We did the math to find that that would cost us over $100 in refill supplies. Plus the springs which we would have to order on Amazon and hope they were the correct size. Again we ran into roadblocks. Finally, we decided to purchase a 28 pack of G2 colorful gel pens on Amazon and we removed their insides and put them into Owen’s 3-D pens.
The 3-D pens created roadblocks as well because multiple times the print failed. We tried to print six at a time, a few times, and as the pens were being printed, and were getting taller and taller, they would fall over during the print and mess the entire print. One time the printer just went wonky and released strings of plastic all over the place. We had multiple failed prints before we finally had enough for his classroom the morning of the learning fair.
This project was really difficult because we kept running into roadblocks. We would hit a challenge, work through it, get frustrated, and come up with a solution that would then fail. So we would switch gears, research a new way, try it out and watch it fail again. We then would have to come up with another solution, try it out, and hope that it would work this time. If anything, we both learned that you can push through challenges and have lots of trials and errors before you find a solution. It was a learning experience for sure!
At the learning fair, Owen had about 30 3-D printed gel, pens of all different colors to hand out to the parents and students that came around to learn about his project. He felt so proud of his creation and proud of the challenges we went through. People were mentioning his pens for the next several days, that they had gotten one or that they were hoping to get one. I’m proud of Owen for his efforts, for pushing through and working to figure out a solution.
