From Art to Part

converting clip art, sketches or pictures to 3D plaques

The students will learn about the conversion of raster (pixel based) drawings or pictures to vector (lines and arcs) for the use in engineering documents and manufacturing, through the production of a 3D plaque. This learning will be enabled by the VC skills learned in order to be sucessful in any type of distance exchange. The students will also act as the builder of someone elses design. This will serve as a good example of many professional relationships.

The students will have already learned how to design and construct a plaque of their own. A one week time period will be needed for the introduction to the CNC MasterCam QuickPart software. Videos and on line tutorials on how to use the MasterCam QuickPart software and classroom instruction will be used to train the students. Another week will be spent introducing the VC presentation methods and to train students through Powerpoint presentations.

The students will be gathering ideas and information via email, fax or screen capture from a remote site. This remote site, another school will act the part of the client. They will specify the content of the plaque, the size, the material, plastic or wood and use whatever means is available to them to transmit the design to the manufacturing site. After the picture is received the students will share the process of converting the drawing to a form that can be machined. The plaque will then be milled out in real time.

Safety practices for operating a high speed router as well as the use of eye protection and secure clamping practices will be covered for both the local students and distance students.

Initially this project will probably be used as an exposure tool for both sites. I envision all the students at least viewing the first sharing and participating in the CNC machining for their own plaque as well as learning to plan a VC project. After the first real sharing class to class I then want to open up the availability to VC on other topics as I have mentioned earlier. These will certainly include our participation in the ROV project and the First Robotics competition. But I also want to leave it open ended so that student introduced in our initial Art to Part exchange could continue to work one on one at a distance to complete other plaques or to expand it to include other projects. For many this would give them not only a connection to some place beyond our classroom but to build a professional relationship of peer to peer dependance.

This project was created by Pat Bearss as part of the class Planning Interactive Curriculum Connections.