Laser Cut: Christmas Decorations

 

We have always encouraged students to look at unpacking their ideas and creations including locating and working out how an item was made.

Recently we had students who attending a local craft market, as part of the market one of the students purchased a cartoon-ish reindeer which is shown in the left of the group photo.

The student purchased this item, brought it into school and this created a situation where we were able to look at how it had been put together.  This became a situation where we asked our students - how was this made, what did it take to create and where was the use of technology.

We then decided to pose the question - is this something that we could make? What might it look like - and what else could we produce.

We started by using a basic search engine but then included in the search the phrase laser cut template and Christmas decorations.

The students located the tree shown left.   This temple included a base and a mid point, and the design was freely available on a site as a free template download.  The file was duly downloaded and the laser cut was completed.

The actual laser cutting took approximately six minutes- the 3D Print version of something this size would have been considerably longer.

The next step for the students is what can we add to the design, what can we use to decorate this further - how can our students potentially use a 3D Printer or other material to finalise the decoration for this project.   The potentially to produce a run of class prints (a set of twenty five or so).