Consolarium

February 18th, 2011

Building the Impossible!

Derek Robertson

Comments: 1 Comment Tags: Tags: cfe, design & tech, Hawick High School, rapid prototyping, rapman
 : Categories Design & Tech, Scottish Borders

*Guest post from Stuart Meldrum at Hawick High School who is involved with our rapid prototyping initiative.

“Cool sir! That looks amazing!…but what is it?”
That is generally the reaction from pupils (and staff) when they first set eyes on the RapMan currently sitting in my classroom. This fantastic monster looks like it has been pieced together with whatever spare parts were lying around the workshop and that isn’t actually too far from the truth. The kit that LTScotland have provided to three schools was essentially a thousand piece jigsaw, where the parts are all standard components like nuts, bolts, and washers, with some laser cut acrylic sheets thrown in. This meant that a lot of my time was spent piecing it all together, this is not a quick task! There is a prebuilt version available for quite a bit more cash.

For the uninitiated the RapMan is one example of a Rapid-Prototyper. This essentially means that it is a machine that can print in 3 dimensions, but instead of leaving a trail of ink the RapMan has a head that can move in two directions and pulls though a filament of plastic, heating it as it moves. The melted plastic is trailled over a bed and a 2D shape is laid out. Then the bed is lowered and the head starts leaving another trail on top of the first. Over time and successive layers the melted plastic fuses together to build up a 3D shape.

For years in Design and Technology departments we have been drawing and designing things in 3D using CAD software but now we have an affordable method or realising these designs. Normally the cost of this sort of machine puts it well out of reach of schools.

Now that our RapMan is up and running in Hawick High School we have loads of ideas as to how we could start to use it in our courses. It lends itself naturally to Product Design where pupils have to create models of their designs, but it fits in all the way down the school too. Also, now that Computer Aided Manufacture is explicitly mentioned in the Level 3 and Level 4 Outcomes and Experiences (TCH 3.13 and TCH 4.15) schools will be increasingly looking to use this technology.

Listen to Stuart’s take on the challenges that he has faced in trying to get the rapid protoyping kit up and running in Hawick High School.