Inventors Workshop

The 6th and 7th graders used their imagination to make things of their own in the Inventor’s Workshop class during 1st semester. First step was to bring their creativity and inspirations into Tinkercad where they created their own original designs. Tinkercad (https://tinkercad.com) is a free web app for 3d design, electronics, coding and 3d simulation. But great ideas are not born in a vacuum. Tinkercad allowed the students to bring in images from the web, photos off of a digital camera, and designs by others that they could edit. The core classroom rule was simply that all designs had to be of their own imagination and modeled by themselves. No copycats.

The next phase was fabrication, where students turned their digital designs into a physical objects. Most often one of Hoonah School’s 3d printers were used to make the object. 3d printers melt plastic into a strand the size of human hair, then extrude the strand onto a build plate in an outline of the design. It typically takes hours to complete the design, building one thin layer at a time.

Fabrication using 3d printers was also used to make reusable silicone molds for candy or resin, and to make casting molds for pewter metal using the investment casting technique. No longer must thingies be limited to plastic!

The students were also able to fabricate using a 2d laserengraver and cutter. Where a 3d printer deposits plastic, a laser burnsmaterial. At lower power, the laser will only burn the top of the material,leaving an image. At high power, the laser will cut right through the materialwith a kerf of about 0.2mm. Students used mostly acrylic, basswood and plywoodmaterials.

The final project was to make animated ‘bots. Unfortunatelythe semester ended too quickly, so there was no time to design in Tinkercad and3d print. Students used paper templates instead, then decorated them as theywished. Students wired motors, sensors, and LED lights to a microcontroller,then coded the ‘bot for a host of playful behaviors and responses.

Inventor’s Workshop made possible with support fromAssistance for the Arts grant administered by Dianne Zemanek, SealaskaHeritage Institute, and the Benteh Alaska STEAM Hub.