My goal is to share only the best resources for school Maker activities. I am using Amazon Affiliate links so if a product catches your eye and you use the link I provide, I do get a kickback. However, it is my promise, I will only share the best resources as no companies are paying me to share their content or resources. I only share what I know works with my students. Click on any of the areas for more information.
Featured Maker Project
Towards the end of the school year, I was able to get a Carbide3D Nomad desktop milling machine. To be honest, I had no idea what I was doing and still only understand a little. đŸ™‚ Thanks to my 8th-grade tech team, we played around with it and started figuring some things out. Below is a simple flow we developed for our projects. This is a very watered down version so please email if you want to know more. [email protected]
Ideate:
This is such an obvious step but worth noting. It is here where we come up with our ideas of what we want to cut. A lot of our inspiration comes for checking out Pinterest (insert eye roll) or Thingiverse. Often, we take those ideas and modify or change them up to suit our needs.
Plan and Model:
This is likely the toughest step as we take our ideas and try to create the model. So far, we are using Tinkercad which is free and easy to manage for the students. It allows us to upload the STL file and edit it, or create one from scratch. Another step in the model phase is taking our final STL file from Tinkercad and importing it into Meshmaker which is the program we use to create the tool paths the woodcutter will take.
Cut and Trash:
This is the exciting part because we send the toolpath file to the machine and it starts cutting. It is also at this time we notice errors in our math, misplacement of our clamps, or just a poor design. My garage floor is a graveyard of poorly planned cuts and broken drill bits. đŸ™‚
