STEAM Lab Needs 3D Filament to Bring Designs to Reality

Funded Jan 18, 2022

Firstly, thank you for all of your kind donations. Thanks to your help, the Moffett Engineering lab was able to fully utilize all four of 3D Printers. Every student designed and printed their own custom tablet holder. These tablet holder are designed with holding an iPad Pro in mind, and this includes an appropriate slot for a charging port. They used Tinkercad 3d modeling software to design the structure of the holder using basic shapes like rectangles, cylinders, and triangles. They followed size specifications to ensure that the 'groove' fits both the width of an iPad Pro in milimeters, but can also accommodate smaller phones. The Moffett engineering lab printed over 130 tablet holders out of the PLA plastic that your donations provided. The students made into reality a functional and cool keepsake as they move onto Middle School.

Secondly, it means so much to this community of students to get to work with 3D printers, make something with their imagination, and then bring it into reality. My students, of course, also got to select the color for the print and also import SVG artwork of their favorite cartoons, sports teams, and anime characters to add personal flair to their designs. Rapid prototyping technology is normally not financially in reach for Lennox's parents, so having the opportunity to learn about Fused Deposition Modeling via hands on learning means the world to my students. Of course, having a large amount of PLA rolls donated to our lab meant that every student got to make their own design and go through some of the trial and error of what can and cannot be printed with current FDM technology.

Finally, having the material for our lab meant that we used the PLA beyond the initial lab. Not pictured were arrowkeys we printed for custom game controllers that we wired in a circuits lab, as well as handles for speakers designed in our audio lab. Thanks to this resource, Moffett's 5th grade classes can more clearly think about 3 dimensions of objects as well as convert from our American imperial units to the millimeters our printers need. Most importantly, they understand the power of the engineering design process, where we research, plan, and then implement a solution.”

With gratitude,

Mr. Tejada