Teaching by Demonstration, Using Epoxy to Hold it Together!

Two of my students decided early this past year that they wanted to create a 3D printed guitar.  It ended up turning out to be pretty cool!  Here is a picture of the guitar so far:

All of the pieces of the bass of the guitar were 3D printed using our PolyPrinter 229. We used 1.75mm ABS filament for our plastic. The bass section of the guitar turned out to be fairly weighty when all was said and done.  You may be asking yourself, how did he get those pieces to adhere to each other?  

First, the students created pieces of the bass of the guitar similar to that of puzzle pieces, they each had a unique shape and size and fit to a corresponding piece or pieces accordingly.  To get the plastic to stay in that configuration, I had the students use Oatey PVC primer and cement. We got the combination primer and cement from Lowe's.  It was this product specifically, Oatey PVC cement and primer combo pack. 

I was initially skeptical that the PVC cement and primer would work on ABS plastic, so I tried it out on some spare 3D printed pieces that we had lying around and by golly, it held them together mighty fine!  I was also concerned about any heat that the reaction between the primer and cement would give off, such that it might melt the ABS plastic since it is different from PVC; however, this is a non-issue, no heat problems to speak of. 

Now, the PVC primer is purple. Anything it touches becomes purple, forever. So, I told my students, that when handling the primer, they needed to be very cautious, they also wore smocks to prevent small splashing from getting on their clothing. I demonstrated how to apply the primer, thin coat, you don't need a ton, and then immediately apply the cement and hold the pieces together. We applied the cement more generously than the primer, but again, not a terribly thick coat, just enough to ooze out of the sides, to which can be sanded or cut off.  This turned out to work great! Each day we added another piece until the bass of the guitar was as you see in the above picture. It is still holding strong months later!  

I found another use for PVC primer and cement aside from using it to fix the PVC piping on a broken sprinkler system (yes, I had some experience of my own fixing some sprinkler related PVC pipe issues at my house).  I let my students know that this is a great skill to have in their repertoire, knowledge of using primers and cement to hold things together.  You never know when you may have to fix your own sprinkler pipe system!

February Challenege Updates & More!

The February challenge has ended and here are some pictures of the entries for the Mardi Gras Mask Challenege:

In addition, one of my groups of students have been collaborating on a very cool website for the game Clash Royale. The students go through and describe their thoughts on Clash Royale changes, provide meta reports, and card information. Pretty cool, check it out!

I also have a group of students working on an exoskeleton that they plan to be able to attach to the back of one of the group members, pretty cool to see them gain some great skills in creating this that they may otherwise not. They have learned how to use saws to cut PVC pipe, use drills to drill holes in PVC, and bolt pieces together.

Yet another group of my students are creating the frame for a 1/3 scale model of a Ford Model T for the Ford Model T Challenge.  Progress can be followed here and on Twitter using the #modeltchallenge.

My students are always amazing me with how creative, inventive, and motivated they can be!

February Challenges

February is here! Mardi Gras time!  In the spirit of Mardi Gras, one of the challenges for the month of February is to 3D print a Mardi Gras mask that is contoured to one's face.  This may seem like a simple challenge, but figuring out how to contour shapes on Tinkercad has been a little more challenging for my students than I originally thought it would be. Some of my students are using AutoDesk Fusion 360 to make their masks.

Here is a picture of some of the first submissions:

We also have a coding challenge going on this month, where students need to program a simple switch on/off coffee pot using a Raspberry Pi or Arduino board and set a timer/make it turn off and on using a program and not just the switch.  As of now, there has not been as much interest in this challenge as I would like, so I am thinking of incentives for the students to get them out of their comfort zone and try something new!

Starting the Spring Semester

We've started the spring semester here at the Oakridge School and things are already moving quickly. January seems to have flown by as we are already in February!

In January, the students and teachers came back from a nice 2 week break.  It took a couple of days for us all to get back into the swing of things, but once we did, we flew!

We hosted a Maker Faire on Saturday January 23rd and had a great turn out!  Many younger prospective students were very interested in what we are doing in our Makerspace. The big attraction for the young ones was the 3D printer. We also had Makey Makey demonstrations, robotics demonstrations, and some engineering demonstrations.  It was a great time for us to showcase to the community what we are doing in the Oakridge Upper School Makerspace.

In the athletics, we hosted the 8th annual Oakridge Iron Championships powerlifting meet where my kids competed well and many took home medals!

In my tech class, I had students write project proposals, what they plan on working on all semester and showing a finishes product in May.  Students submitted proposals for anything from a building an exoskeleton to building a 3D printed model car that runs on an Arduino motor!  I have some students building websites and others building 3D printed card holder boxes that will have movable parts to bring the cards up as you open the box.  It continually amazes me the different ideas students will come up with.

In addition, we have our challenges back and going for February with 2 month long challenges. The first is coding/programming a simple switch activated coffee pot to be programmable using either a Raspberry Pi or Arduino. The second is to 3D print a Mardi Gras mask that is contoured to fit a person's face, not just a flat mask. I even got in some gold filament for the Mardi Gras prints!

So far, I have 1 submission for the Mardi Gras mask challenge, and here is a picture of it printing (which is why the focus is off, the printer is going):

Lots of great things going on at Oakridge right now, it is a great time to be an Owl!

End of the Semester

We've come to the end of the semester, and that means it is exam time!  While the students in my tech classes will not have a final in the traditional sense, they all contributed to the Makerspace throughout the semester and I was able to grade them on the pictures they took, the blogs they wrote, and their participation in the everyday activities.

We had a bunch of winners collect their winning from our October challenges last week, here is a picture with the students and their winnings!

In addition, we had a light bulb shaped cookie cutter challenge, and here is our winner with one dozen light bulb shaped cookies from Cookie Genius.

And then we had our challenge for the months of Nov/Dec, to make the most creative 3D printed cookie cutter. Here are pictures of our submissions and our winner with some cookies!

While the students take their exams, I'll still be running our 3D printer non-stop!  Last week, we printed out half of a chess set, and today I am printing the other half so that our chess club will have a unique, 3D printed chess set!

We had a great fall semester. I am looking forward to an even better spring semester with more challenges, more ideas, and more creativity!

Back After Thanksgiving Break

We're back to school this week after a nice little break for the Thanksgiving holiday.  Many of the students traveled over the holidays, so getting back into the swing of things today was a little rocky, lol!

We managed to get the outer 'posters' on the Time Square billboard. Also, as you can see from the picture the Empire State building and the Chrysler building are missing. They are currently being painted by my classes to make them more life like and give our winter scene from New York a little more color!

We are also working on 3-D printing cookie cutters this week using the website Cookie Caster.  The challenge over the next 2 weeks is to come up with the most artistic/creative cookie cutter and win some cookies!  I thought this might be a fun, yet easier challenge for the students, given we are heading down the home stretch into finals week in just 8 more academic days!  Yikes!  It feels as if the semester has flown by, but I'm sure students would tell you otherwise.

I'm looking forward to showing off some of the creative cookie cutters that are made. I think that the fun part will be the kids taking them home and seeing if they will actually function and cut the dough!

Some Updates

It's been a while since my last blog post, but fear not, much has happened!  My students are doing some amazing things! 

We finished up the October challenges and I believe the kids had some great fun with them.  After the rubber band powered Lego car challenge, we moved right into the most creative 3D printed Jack-O-Lantern.  Below is the picture of the winning Jack-O-Lantern.

We then moved on the final week of October into the candy corn catapult challenge. The students made catapults using only popsicle sticks, rubber bands, and plastic spoons. The person or team to launch the candy corn the farthest won the challenge.  Unfortunately, I do not have a video of the farthest launch, but it measured a whopping 82 feet!

We are now into mid-November and I have my classes working on 3D printing and constructing out of Legos, a winter scene from Times Square and Rockefeller Center.  So far this is what we have:

The green print will be our tree for Rockefeller Center, it still needs to be trimmed, just like a real tree!  We also have a skating rink that needs to be painted, and our plan is to have the skater twirling around on the rink using an Arduino motor.  We also plan to print replicas of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Buidling.  I'll post a picture of the finished scene once it is up!