3D Printing Furniture for a Laser Cut Dolls House

 

We have detailed that this year we are looking at students undertaking several long term projects - the first of which is rebuilding the dolls house that was rescued prior to it being dumped in a rubbish bin.

The Y8 students who are working on this are using their design skills to use the laser cutter to rebuild as much of the base as possible.

As much as the intention was to repair the damage to the original house, the main wood that was used to put it together was untreated MDF which has in a couple of places been wet, causing considerable damage.

After finding examples online that showed some ideas that could be used in the design (such as the shutters on the windows or the faux brick work) the students were able to use inkscape to design the ends.

This is being produced by the senior students at our school, although our junior school students can see the project and have been informed of its intention, which is to give it to the junior school for them to use in the Y1 classroom, where our five year olds are.

We thought about how our own juniors, who are slightly older, seven and eight year olds.  We wanted these students to be apply their design ideas using Tinkercad to create something to compliment the dolls house.

The first designs that the students created were using Tinkercad's main interface.   These had minimal creation from the students, but the idea was to use these as inspiration for students to create their own versions.    In this example the student combined the table with the lamp and then used the size of the table relative to the size of the dolls house.   We have a rule with the students thats typically we ask the students to design their own version of items rather than use ones that are commercially available.

An example of an authentic design from a student is shown left, the students design is based of course on a bed, with the student using the design to create the basic features.

We have also considered how we might be able to use other technology available to our students - the idea is to use the Roland Versa Sign Maker to construct the stickers for the base, and then use potentially the students to hand sew the blankets to fit the base.