Dolls House - 2025 Project nearing completion.

 

In March of this year we started a school based project, in conjunction with a senior classroom (Year 7/8) where we attempted to rebuild a Dolls House as a special gift for our junior school.

We have written extensively about the project including the role that our students played, which was creating the furniture which will ultimately go into it for the students to play with - this is detailed in the slideshow at the end of this post.

Since August the Dolls House has undergone the final layering of details.   There are now two balconies on one side of the house above the two doors.   The upper layer has been created with windows and additional strength has been provided by a beam that is running the length of the design.

An internal staircase has also been introduced.   The entire design is now awaiting roofing with hinges that can provide easy access and some finishing touches.   A clear coat will be applied to the final design to seal and protect it.

We are also going to use the Versa Sign Maker to produce a protective coat for the wood.

While this has been a significant long term project it will end up producing something that will receive considerable use in the junior school.

The slideshow below details the entire project and our students involvement in the furniture making.

Laser Cutting: Students Basic Projects to Start the School Year

Challenge: To introduce Laser Cutting to students in the junior school.

Background: Its 2024 - this is another school year in New Zealand, in a junior classroom where the students are seven and eight years old.  Again this year we are looking at producing projects and engaging the students with a range of activities.   This year to create something different for 'the last stand' we are wanting to introduce the concept of Laser Cutting to the students.

This was a short project created by a senior student (twelve year old) at the school which is intended to excite the juniors into following the example.   This project is intended as an introductory example so that the students can get the 'feel' for the laser cutter in a short space of time.   

Level of Difficulty for the Project: Low.  The student involved selected an image online with the intention of it being a silhouette.  They then used GIMP to introduce a circle as the background, converting the file in the process making it suitable for laser cutting, in this case a background of a circle was chosen.   It is going to be passed over to Y3 and Y4 students in the coming days.

Size: The design is currently 150mm across.   The bamboo that is used for the wood (this is not MDF) was chosen as something durable that could be handled but there is not intended to be any sealing or painting of the wood, the idea is to complete the project as quickly as possible.

Timeframe: The speed of the laser cutter is one of the best things about it.  Three of these were completed in under ten minutes - the intention is to push these out for a number of students (a class) in short order.

What we would do differently/next steps for students: The image shown above while striking has not worked perfectly, there was some loss inside the interior of the flowers.  The purpose of the laser cut is another issue - at present the idea is to create a stencil - but this is not easily possible unless the wood is spray painted, which would affect its presentation.   This will be developed further. 

Combining Laser Cutter and 3D Printer: Earrings

Challenge: How to develop 3D Printed Earrings further to include further use of technology.

Background:   As detailed earlier on this blog, one of the students initially designed a key ring, featuring a cow.  Following a brain storming session the student decided to modify and resize the design creating instead of a larger key chain instead a pair of earrings (which significantly reduced the print time).  

Once the student had completed this and checked and rechecked her design she then focussed on creating additional animals (an early prototype is the dogs shown left) and looked at different hoop sizes that would allow some variation.    

We next challenged her to look at ways that she might be able to present the earrings at the School Market Day.    One of the ways the we investigated was looking at using another part of the technology at our school to produce a stand.    We have a large scale AEON Laser Cutter in a technology room at school.

This laser cutter has been used for various project including the producing a earrings stand.  The stand is cut from MDF and measures 170mm at the base, is 400mm high and has stands that come out from the main base that are 80mm in length.   

The students are able to print this in three seperate pieces, in MDF which then can be slotted together to form the stand.  The stand can then be spray painted to complete its presentation.

This allows the student to focus on the manufacturing of the earrings for the stand to complete the business.  As stated on the blog these have the advantage of taking a relatively small amount of time to print, around twenty minutes, and these can be produced extremely cheaply (approximately twenty cents worth of PLA).

This has allowed the student concerned to price the earrings accordingly at $2.00 a pair, meaning that the units are making a profit of just over $1.25 per pair.   As we have stated on this blog previously the focus of this event is innovation - the idea is for the students to use the technology to produce something unique and original and market it to the community, the intention is not to maximise profit for the items which are being offered to the community for sale.

Laser Cut Project Ideas: Market Day Coasters

Challenge: To produce an item that can be sold by students to. the local community as part of our school Market Day 2023.

Background: One of the challenges for the students is balancing originality, design and students taking part in a process where they create something that ticks all the boxes.

These designs were created by a Y7 (11 year old) student who is experienced with the use of the Laser Cutter (this will be featured in detail in a seperate post about the hardware that is available).

The student in this case followed a simple project they identified a series of images or patterns that were online and free available.  As they were targeting several specific interests, such as a football team, the student located the logo of the team and used that.  

They then imported the images into Gimp for the image manipulation and then converted them for laser cutting.

The speed of the laser cutting into MDF meant that the time for each cut including the engraving on the design was 3-4 minutes so the entire sheet of designs shown left took less than half an hour.  

The design are shown as they have been removed from the laser cutter.  To seal them the student has the option of applying a sealant or an undercoat and then potentially spray painting the designs.   The student was able to complete the entire process from design to printing, removing and preparation in an afternoon.   They are then going to bundle these designs into groups for the selling on school Market Day.  The pricing of the designs is up to the student by using MDF for the designs instead of a more expensive wood (such as a bamboo) which is perfectly adequate for the designed purpose.    

Laser Cut Project Ideas: Market Day 2023

Laser Cut Print - Box.    This six sided box was printed as a series of sides which were then assembled and glued.   

A teacher in the senior school provided the box template, and the hinges.  The students were then able to customise the design by adding features.  In this instance the student created a jaw line, nose and the eyes.   The shading on the design was also created by using the Laser Cutter.    The total laser cut time was five minutes twenty to complete.

The purpose of the box is for storage.   This is one of the items that will be sold for our school on Market Day.   There are additional features that have been created for this (laser cut ears, tails etc).  The box measures 80mm by 80mm by 80mm.

This longer version of the box shown left - with a snake design and snake theme, including again a mouth operating as part of the lid mechanism.   The eyes again have been taken out of the design (with the students considering how they might customise the design).   The design is considerably larger than the first box shown - this one measures 300mm long, is 80mm high and 90mm long.  

Ten minutes was required to produce the box which was printed as six individual pieces with tabs which then needed to be glued together.  For this example 2mm of MDF was used (the above box was three times as think).   

School Holidays NZ - Update: September 2023

It is currently the break between Term Three and Term Four School terms in New Zealand - our students are one week into a two week holiday. We have a major event coming up in November - that is our 2023 Market Day.   This will feature a number of items sold to the local community many of which have been created using some of the specific technology available to our students.  You can see the addition of 'Market Day' tab on our main page.

Our laser cutter is being used in addition to our 3D Printers.   One of the businesses shown left features the MDF Laser Cut planes which have then been spray painted.   

We have also a group of students who during the holidays have been further developing and designing their own 3D Printed animal businesses.   They are roughly divided into two main groups - the first is those who are just exploring their 3D Printing.  These students are using open sourced prints that can then either be modified or 'value added' so that the students can input an aspect of their design.  A number of these businesses and designs have already been featured on this page.

An example of this is the rabbit shown left - the original design is a freely available one from Thingiverse.   The student concerned who is an avid rabbit owner has spray painted the designs (under the appropriate supervision) and then came up with the idea of adding glitter to the designs when the paint had yet dried.   This allowed the glitter to stick to the designs allowing them to sparkle.

This idea came from the students who are working on creating the 'Dragon'.    We have detailed this previously.  We have students who have the eighteen hour printed dragon (online it is described as an 'Ice Dragon' who have worked out how to layer it with the spray painting - who then decided to add glitter to the dragon to give it a dramatic effect when it is tilted slightly.

Again this came from the result of having the students print a design that they wanted to try and use aspects of it to copy another design.    Two students have the two prototypes which they have taken home for the holidays with instructions to play with, manipulate the prints and attempt to think about ways to enhance its presentation.  When the holidays are completed it will be interesting to see how these ideas have developed and what will follow as a result.   The second group of designs are the designs that are created 'from scratch' where the students have followed a process of creating a flexi-animal.   Again examples of this print can be found on this blog.

Laser Cut Projects - Ongoing 3D Print Projects 2023

As mentioned previously students at our school have a variety of technology to use with the creation of projects and work.  We have an industrial sized laser cutter available for students to use.   We previously posted about the 2023 Speaker Project, where students were creating a box to house a USB/Blue Tooth Speaker.   Previously we had versions of these, which did include significant 3D Printing dating back to our first use of 3D Printers in 2015.

The student who saw the example of the Laser Cut AT-AT Imperial Star Wars Walker wanted to include an original design for his speaker and decided to use a 'plane' theme and design to house his speaker.

The control panel is just to the left of the cockpit - the speakers themselves site at the back of the plane above the back wheel - with one on each side.   The student has worked independently to produce the shape and the next step is to think about how he might refine or improve his design - can he use the sticker printer machine to produce decals for the wings/plane? Can he use the 3D Printer to create a working propeller for the front of the plane and wheels that work for the base of the plane? The students work on these projects as part of our DPE (Design Production Engineering) in a five week block once a week from 9am to 1pm.    

We have also had students begin the prototyping of next years projects.   The night light shown on the left is the early version of what the students may be looking at.    The frame for the night light is made by using the laser cutter to design it.   A scene is created for the inside of the design - while it is currently the African scene shown students could potentially modify this in a number of ways - by including different scenes or ones that are of particular significance to themselves.    The LED light that is shown to be green is a multi coloured light with a controller and is able to cycle through a range of colours by manually clicking a controller.

The base of the stand features the coiled rope for decoration and a further balanced stand which offers the opportunity to have additional decorations etc.   Again we would be potentially wanting our students to look to develop these projects further to add value, depth and designs to them to ensure that they are pushing themselves with their creation and making.

We are continuing to work on projects and complete work for the upcoming School Market Day.  While we have a classroom of Y3/4 students (who are seven and eight years old) they have all been tasked with creating one original 3D Print that could potentially be marketed and sold to our local community on this evening/day.   

For some of our younger students with their first attempts at 3D Printing while it initially can appear to be challenging once they have made an attempt the results for the students can be fantastic.  In this design on the left the student wanted to make a cow themed key ring or tag and was able to produce the following result on their first attempt.   We are working on a number of these projects in the background and will be posting them closer to the completion time.

3D Printed and Laser Cut Stamp

Challenge: A student wanted to create an original and customised (for themselves) stamp.

Background:  A version of this project was completed last year.    A student who had an interest in completing this project used the project, detailed on this blog here as their template.   This was a student who had some 3D Printing experience but wanted to stretch themselves further by designing something that was different but had a purpose.   They had seen the previous effort from last year, had an interest in craft related matters and were keen to produce a working stamp.   Previously we had created the entire object using a 3D Printer and made the stamp element from a print as well, however we decided that the quality needed to be improved.   The answer to this was found in the use of a laser cutter to cut rubber.  We purchased this from an engraving shop, who had engraving rubber that could be used with the laser cutter and were able to cut the rubber which produced a quality print for the students.

Level of Difficulty: Medium.   The student was able to produce the handle and base including the design of their name, and their heart at the first attempt.  There was rafting about the base of the design, as shown in the photo that was easily able to be removed with pliers giving the finish shown.  The student is eleven years old.

Size: The base of the print measure 90mm wide, 60mm deep and was 5mm high.   The handle was a total heigh of 35mm

Timeframe: Two hours to complete the print, the rafting that was required couldn't be avoided to have a working handle as part of the design.   Given the dimensions and purpose the print this would be near the minimum to have an effective design.  

What we would do differently/Next Steps for Student: The obvious next step is the laser cutting.  We purchased the rubber at a small price as an A4 sheet, which would be enough to produce ten stamps easily so its realistic to consider that a class set (assuming 25 students) could be produced during a week of printing, using a single machine.   The positive aspect of this for us is that the student herself has managed the entire project, designed the print was happy with the result and the design via Tinkercad matched expectations (sometimes elaborate prints do not translate well in terms of finish or purpose).

The other thing to consider is the age of the technology that we are using to complete this project.   The Ultimaker 2+ is a recondition printer that is seven years old now, it produces reliable basic prints which are useable in the classroom.

If you are producing prints inspired by this post or have produced posts similar we would love to hear about it and have you share it with us via this blog or by emailing the teacher in charge.