Tag: diy

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Canoe Nearing Completion

The first cardboard boat was completely assembled this afternoon. Now the students need to spend time painting the skin with polyurethane sealant to keep out the water. After it is sealed, they will then paint the boat with some sort of color scheme, and from our discussions it appears they want to try and make it look like a leaf. Should be interesting. The cardboard boat races are just over a week away, so I think they are in a decent place to get it completed and ready for the water. A few photos below.

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Locker Badges

This week I have the freshmen. My co teacher and I switch each week who is teaching them. Since our classroom has lockers, we decided to have them make their own locker badges. We created a template file for Inkscape, and then I created a video to show them how to complete the file and send it to the laser cutter. The video includes how to vectorize a photo of themselves to place on the locker badge as well as adding text for their name. It’s a relatively quick little project, but gives them a sense of ownership within the shop. I’ll take some more photos of all the completed badges in the next few days. For now, here is a link to the project page.

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SumoBots

Today the Sumobots finally did some battle against each other. There were several entries from our student teams, which included names such as Bozo Bot, Mama Tipson, Connoli, Open-Faced Sandwich, Reverse Sandwich, and Kendo(Revived). Many of the bots were not as fully developed as the students wanted, but they are learning the difficulties of creating a fully autonomous robot from scratch. My favorite bot had to be Kendo(Revived) which is far and away the most advanced bot of the group. It features a plasma and waterjet steel scraper and jaw to remove combatants from its path, and is build on a solid foundation with triple traction wheels and custom circuit board. Additionally, the students were adding small magnets to get the bot to the heaviest allowable weight for combat. We had a lot of fun watching the robots today, and will probably have another day of bouts in the next few weeks, which will allow students to update their robots and make them better.

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Water Jet

With our seniors leaving yesterday, myself and another student took on the task of learning the waterjet machine. The process is fairly simple, as its a two dimensional cutting machine much like several others we have in the shop. The hard part is understanding all of its moving parts, as well as its antiquated operating system and software. That being said, we were able to cut some parts out of steel on our first try yesterday, so I think we at least have a good enough understanding to keep the machine running.

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Seniors

Yesterday was the last full day with our seniors. Most of them continued to work on their cardboard canoe, which still has a long way to go, but they have vowed to come back and finish it over the next two weeks. Additionally, Myles spent some time teaching the next generation of students how to use the Omax Waterjet machine. We were able to make several successful cuts with it, and when it is working, it is a remarkable machine that has the ability to cut metal with incredible accuracy. A photo below of Myles in teacher mode.