Week 4¶
Assignments¶
- Field Activity 1: The Workings of Mechanisms
Process¶
- I went into TinkerCad and started 3D modeling the different mechanisms I wanted to show: gears, a lever and ball bearing. I had some help with the ball bearings from a colleage to understand how to create the right angle for the inner and outer rings for the balls to fit.
- Sent to print once. Discovered that Tinkercad bevels work different form the ones I’m used on art software such as Maya, they are rounded than expected, which caused a failure due to lack of support and bad adhesion. Iteration 1 was a failure:
- Fixed the problems by modifyind the desings slightly and adding limited supports on slicer. It worked great!
- Clean my prints off support and stringing.
- Put my prints to together to make sure they worked:
-They all worked as expected!
Lesson Plan¶
The students will interact with the ball bearing and put together the gear train and lever to understand how these mechanisms work and their main differences. You can see the detailed lesson plan in SCOPES by clicking here.
Reflection¶
Utilizing interactable materials elevates understanding and learning to a more instinctive level. Although theory is important, having the practical knowledge is what makes a lot of concepts useful. In topics such as mechanisms, seeing and feeling how they work is what can create this connection and therefore the real value behind this lesson plan. Digital fabrication makes this possible by giving the teacher the tools to create and customize the material to give that hands-on, practical experience to the students. I really believe that using digital fabrication tools is what will allow the people of the future to have a better understanding of what exists and go beyond to innovate and make the world a better place.
Engagement in educational situations is at a low point during these days. Getting the students to be interested, treat the material with care and, more importantly, have the curiosity and motivation to interact and experiment is one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced since becoming a teacher a few years ago. Getting novel (in the eyes of the student) and playful tools such as the ones in this lesson plan are only the first step into getting and maintaining the students’ engagement. As a teacher, it is necessary to do your best to create an atmosphere of curiosity and improvise to make a fun, hence engaging, environment.
I am a very theoretical person myself, so I created this lesson not only for my students but for me to learn as well. I’ve always been good with numbers and knowing how things work which has helped me convert that into practical knowledge frequently, but things like geometry and mechanics I have since forever struggled to translate from theories to the real world. This helped me visualize how the mathematical and physical concepts of things such as tolerance, ratios and power transfer actually work in practice. The ball bearing especially was a challenge since I needed to create the right spacing between the balls and the rings, so a lot about how to work with angles was learned.
Tools¶
-3D Printer -Bambu Slicer