Engineering Projects Gallery

After choosing a scene that contains depth, they create a sketch that illustrates a place that can be broken down into 4 distinct plates. Students place their sketches on the whiteboard and are critiqued by their peers. In critique, they learn to objectively analyze, describe and evaluate each other's work with the intention of making improvements.

Using paper with foam core frames, students use an utility blade to create a simple prototype of their light box and test it with lights to see if it will illuminate the way they like.

Sketches are scanned into Adobe Illustrator and translated into vector paths to be cut out on the laser cutter. They can also be entirely created digitally. After laser cutting, the paper plates are glued onto student-built frames 10” x 6.5”. Students are given a limited amount of wooden frame material and are asked to fill out a cutting schedule to ensure they cut the right amounts and correct lengths.

7” x 10.5” X 4” Boxes are laser cut with a front plexiglass plate and a light transmission plate. There is also a back plate that contains a housing for the Adafruit Playground, the microprocessor that will be used to program lights and in some cases servomotors. Boxes are glued together using wood glue and are sanded and finished with linseed oil.

A programmable Adafruit Neopixel strip is glued onto the backplate. Servomotors that create elements of movement in the shadow box may also be placed at this time. Ground, voltage and data pin wires are soldered from strips and servos onto the Adafruit Playground.

We use Microsoft’s Makecode to program our Adafruit Playground. Makecode allows students to easily toggle between block coding and Javascript. The Playground has many pins and onboard hardware like a thermostat, accelerometer, light sensor, sound and many analog and digital pins to play with!