2025: Year in Review - Dolls House Project

 

In February 2025 we started with one of our long term projects for the year, when we attempted to use our technology to repurpose a Dolls House.

This item was scheduled scheduled to be sent to landfill and we set about using the schools technology, the 3D Printers and the Laser Cutter to see if we could revive the item and make it into a useable item.   While the seniors concentrated on using the laser cutter to replace the panels and the wood base for the item the juniors from our class spent time designing 3D Printed furniture that could be placed inside the Dolls House.

This proved to be an excellent hands on task for the students from our classroom.  They were able to use their iPads and the Tinkercad App to design and create a range of items that could fit into the dolls house and be used as furniture.

The students used various figures to complete some basic proto-typing (shown left) and then created furniture that fitted in with these figures, which was then applied to the Dolls House.

We used Tinkercads AR/VR feature extensively as we were creating the designs and then projecting them into place in the house to see how they would fit, what adjustments needed to be made and how we could develop the designs further.

Further designs and creations followed including some practical problem solving from the students (for instance in the early examples the base of the 3D prints tended to have stump bases as the students found in regular examples however this meant the designs would be weak at this point so they opted to instead produce block finishes to the designs.

Students spent several months refining each design, testing its viability and ensuring that they were challenging themselves by more complex designs and features for the build.

We eventually developed a range of exemplars for furniture that met the brief, that had an element of size that would work with the house and the figures that we had been using.

At the same time the seniors had opted for a complete rebuild of the Dolls House when structural concerns were raised about the MDF base.   This involved extensive laser cut work as the project was started again from scratch.

This also meant that the furniture that our juniors had designed was in turn placed into a different location than had been replaced and some adjustments were required to ensure that they met the purpose they were intended for.  We also investigated using the Roland Versa Sign Maker to produce potential decals for both the walls and the floors of the design.

By October the project was reaching its conclusion - at this point we had the Dolls House fully completed, and the furniture had also been completed and detailed.  We had our major fundraising event for the school year, our 2025 Market Day where the Dolls House became one of the major auction items which was auctioned to raise money for the school.

This was done safe in the knowledge that the files for the production of another Dolls House were on file and easily accessible at the point that we wanted to print another one.

It ended up being a practical task that combined two different levels of work at our school and combined the use of two significant technologies.   We used our iPads and the Tinkercad App for the furniture design and AR/VR and our Mac Books and Sketch-up for the Laser Cutting design and creation.

The slideshow below details the entire process.   Thank you for your visit - this site has now closed for the year, we are rebuilding it in the background and we will be moving onto new projects in February 2026.