Category: Vocational Education

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MEF Grant

This year our school sent out an email in March regarding the availability of Microgrants for items teachers may need. The microgrants are worth up to $200. We were promised a 1-2 week turnaround for requests, so I immediately applied. Unfortunately, I did not hear back for some time. And even when I did, it was unclear when the funds would be provided to us. To make a long, boring story short, I finally received the funds and was able to order new soldering stations for our students. A 1-2 week turnaround became about 3 months, annoying, but I am happy it all worked out. A few photos of a student using the new soldering stations.

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Cleaning the Shop

Still some more cleaning in the shop today. A lot of students are not coming to school, so we are not that busy, plus the day is over at noon. There are a few end of the year meetings, but other than that we are really close to the end.

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Half Day

Today was the first of the remaining half days of school. I’ve mentioned it before, but these day are generally pretty useless, and are simply makeup for snow days we missed. We must get to 180 days of school, so we have 4 total half days added to our schedule this year. Our freshmen finished up working on the Turner’s Cube. Although we did not finish a cube, they learned the process, and we will continue it next year. The upperclassmen continued to clean the shop and perform some odd last minute jobs. Our Robotics team is working furiously to get their Rover completed before they leave on Tuesday. I believe they will spend some time in the shop over the weekend in order to get ready. Many of those students have asked their teachers for permission to stay in the Robotics Shop all day to work on the rover. Almost all of them were granted permission, so the shop was fairly busy this afternoon.

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More Turner’s Cube

Students continued working on making a Turner’s Cube today in class. They learned some milling basics in the classroom, and then got their hands dirty with our Trax manual milling machine. The chips were flying, and although we made a few mistakes, the principles and methodology for milling were learned. A few photos below of freshmen working the milling machine.

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Turner’s Cube

As the school year winds down, I wanted to get my Freshmen students some time working in the machine shop. To that end, we began learning about milling – parts of a mill, types of cutting bits, cutting processes, and materials. Students then created a 3D model of a Turner’s cube in Fusion 360 in order to create a drawing sheet, which shows the dimensions required to make the cube. I went ahead and made sure I had all the procedures correct and fabricated a cube today. I think it turned out ok, a few minor changes I might make regarding the chamfer procedures. Will be interesting to see how the student cubes turn on in the next 2 days. Below are some photos of my completed cube.