3D Printer for Robotics, Art, and Entrepreneurship Students

School:: Corkscrew Middle
Subject:: Technology
Teacher:: Angela Albrecht
: Gerald Sheahan
Students Impacted:: 800
Grade:: 6-8
Date:: September 1, 2018

Investor

Thank you to the following investor for funding this grant.

Chuck & Carol Pedretti - $1,044.50

Impact to My Classroom

# of Students Impacted: 800

Thanks to the printing capabilities you have provided, our students have gained a whole new level of understanding and engagement. Throughout the last few months, the students have worked through many projects that have come to life for them. They have been able to see the purpose of so many of our projects. They have been able to truly grasp the importance of concepts from mathematics such as precision, accuracy and proportionality that seem so abstract to them when they sit in a classroom at a book. One group in particular has created a product that captures the interest of every student who sees it!!! They designed an ID badge holder in Autodesk Inventor that will accommodate all the barcodes and identity information on the badge while still protecting it. They are creating customizations and are planning to have enough of them printed by the end of this week to begin selling to our school community. Thank you doesn’t even begin to encompass it. Without the option of printing their design, it would all have been pretend. Instead they, and indirectly every student who sees their product, realize that product creation is something achievable by anyone. Thank you.

grant photo

Original Grant Overview

Goal

Our goal is to gain the use of a 3D printer for students in the Robotics, Entrepreneurship and Art classes.

What will be done with my students

For all our students, the 3-D printer will provide ongoing enrichment and extension possibilities. Students in art class will be included in the STEAM movement by taking their two dimension designs to three dimension objects using the 3-D printer. Students in the entrepreneurship class will have a broadened set of options for product creation. Students in the robotics class will expand concepts presented within the current curriculum.

Benefits to my students

One example of how the printer will be used in the Foundations of Robotics course is a current project in which students explore dimensioning and the importance of accuracy. They create puzzle cubes using wooden blocks they glue together. They then explore 3-D modeling by recreating the puzzle pieces within SketchUp Pro and Autodesk Inventor software. Having access to a 3-D printer would allow an extension of that understanding by allowing students to print pieces, and analyzing why the pieces might not be interchangeable with those created by other groups that seem to be the same size and shape on paper or on the screen.

In the Entrepreneurship course, students identify a problem, and create a product that will offer a solution to that problem. They then build and pitch a business idea and eventually actually take that product to market. Having access to a 3-D printer will allow them to be more creative when designing their solutions and will enable the students to market products they might otherwise not be able to create.
Giving access to a 3-D printer to students within the art program would allow for a very non-intimidating way of introducing students to STEM who might otherwise be put off by the more traditional manifestations seen within a classroom setting.

Budget Narrative

All product prices are from Amazon.com with free shipping. the printer is the BIBO2 touch laser B dual extruder model. Filament requested is two spools of water-soluble, dissolving support filament and 5 spools of color filament.

Items

#	Item	Cost
1	3-D printer with dual extruders	$839.00
2	various filament colors 5@19.99 each	$99.95
3	PVA filament	$105.55
	Total:	$1,044.50

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