Skip to main content

Spark Lunch! Students & Faculty Laser Cutter



This past Friday we invited K-12 faculty and staff into the Spark Studio here at Convent & Stuart Hall in order to learn how various students and faculty are currently using the machine in both practical as well as creative capacities.

We had a superstar presenter from the 3rd grade who has mastered the workflow for tracing and cutting on the machine. He created his g-hack plane (pictured below) from a drawing and printed it on proofgrade draftboard.

We also had an 11th grader come in to show the work he's been doing for his IB Visual Arts Portfolio as well as personal interest. He's created the game board pictured above for Settlers of Catan primarily using the laser cutter and was the first at our school to start laser cutting pictures. He is now working on a cube with each of the faces laced similar to that pictured below.







I was also excited that several of my digital design students came in to share their work! Some of them have really started to wrap their heads around creative uses for the machine and all of them are on their way. They are now wrapping their photo projects, printing a set of 3-5 themed photos on cardboard & one on wood, a couple are pictured below. We've experimented a lot with power settings including convert to dots vs. vary power and various precision power settings. The bridges below are both on full power with convert to dots on the left and vary power on the right. A lighter power setting of 80% was used for the engraving on the bottom.


As we wrap our first unit on laser cutting and get ready to go on to the 3D printing unit I've found that  in the future it may be best to start half of the class on laser cutting and the other half on 3D printing so as to allow them to work without waiting for a machine. This particularly became an issue when we started engraving photos as engraving takes far more time than cutting. I'm also working on finalizing the process of developing their final projects and have appreciated the insight I've received from other member of the Visual Arts 





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Making Custom Shapes in TinkerCad!

In browsing through tutorial videos for Tinkercad I came across this video, a timelapse of a watermelon being created .  Cool stuff, but fast-paced on timelapse so I consulted with one of our 4th grade TinkerCad experts here at Stuart Hall and we figured out the steps he used. Check it out below and start making your own Tinkercad custom parts. Digital Design Students here at Convent & Stuart Hall will be starting on this tomorrow.
Post a Comment
Read more

Screen Recording & Embedding Your Video in a Blog

How to screen record, speed up my video& embed into my blog: Step 1: Start a Screen Recording by opening QuickTime Player, selecting File → New Screen Recording Step 2:  Click on the red dot to record. For our purposes we will record our voiceover in iMovie after speeding up your video. If you would like to record audio at the same time click the arrow next to record and then select the microphone. Step 3: Drag a box around the area you would like to record or simply click to record the full screen. When the small stop sign appears you know that you are recording. When it is on, but dim (as below) it is preparing to record, but has not yet started. Step 4: Design as you would normally. Confirm you are recording by noticing the stop sign is white. When you want to stop recording click on the icon. Step 5: Save your screen recording immediately by going to File → Save & choosing your Digital Design Folder .  Save your work according to the week a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Digital Design First Cut Project Wrap!

It's been an exciting start to Digital Design highlighted by many successes and aha moments as well as many challenges along the way. Students just finished their First Cut project using hand-art scanned into the Glowforge Laser Cutter and then cut out without any engraving. To step up the complexity students then had to do something with their design to make it 3D or interactive in some way. Some created mobiles while others created a 3D rendering of a house or sunglasses that you can wear. Other projects include a vase of colorful cardboard flowers and a jelly donut! Check out their work here . I really appreciated how students found ways in which they could be creative to take their art beyond the 2D drawing as they figured out how to use the Glowforge. Up next is printing Photos on Cardboard with students publishing 3-5 photos in their collection based on a theme of their choice. I chose architecture focusing on modern vs. classic SF architecture including skyscrapers down...
Post a Comment
Read more