Ok getting ready to sit down to write a curriculum for a middle school 7th grade STEM based class integrated deeply around 3d printing. We do cycles of 6 weeks. The class is call Think, Design, Make!
Anyone have any good ideas of projects that could be done? I want it to be centered around Industrial Design but include elements using Arduino or Rasberri Pi. Like I said it is 6 weeks long Mon -Fri for roughly 40min period a day. I would like to do a series of small projects that build up to a final where the students use what the learned to solve a problem.
Temperature control of a small tank. Position control of a carriage in a rail, an elevator might be one potential application (make it two and start painting on a canvas).
If I were you, I would plan sort of a catapult project. At least boys would love it. Some constraints needed?
define max printing time (e.g. 100 minutes) or
max allowed parts
max weight / printable filament
accuracy: the team that shots the pullet closest to the target and many more…
Beside this I’m thinking about a RepairCafé like project. Things got broken and if nobody takes care of it, it’s useless. If they’ll like this project? Huh, I don’t know. Probably not
If you’re focused on ID then I’d work it from that angle, Arduino/Pi case, peripheral / sensor holders, articulatory end-effector.
Since these machines have no cases, its useful to design one and its an easy 3D project if you just work on the flat part and bolt studs. (weeks 1 & 2), next a way to hold a peripheral (fancy would be pi-cam, cheap would be IR leds and detectors) to observe the environment in some way (weeks 3 & 4), finals would take those observations and act on them in some way.
The canonical project for this is an M&M or Skittles sorter which sorts the candy by color. A more interesting project might be a variant where you stick candies in a grid of different colors to create mosaics (pictures).
