Grade band: 8–12 • Duration: 10–12 weeks (A/B blocks per session) • Prereqs: Intro CAD/printing
Students design, print, and test working mechanisms: gears, cams, ratchets, linkages, compliant hinges, snap‑fits, and simple transmissions. Each challenge couples design-for-printability with measurable engineering targets (speed reduction, lift height, repeatable indexing, grasp force, etc.). The repo ships with week‑by‑week lessons, teacher guides, student briefs, printable rigs for testing, parametric OpenSCAD templates, rubrics, checklists, and analysis helpers.
- Read the Course Outline:
/syllabus/course-outline.md. - Print the core rigs from
/activities/rigs. - Start with Mechanism Templates in
/activities/mechanisms. - Pick a challenge from
/challengesand use the logs & rubrics in/assessments.
syllabus/– scope & sequence, standards.lessons/– A/B block daily plans (Teacher + Student).activities/– parametric mechanism templates + test rigs.challenges/– project briefs (rubric-aligned).assessments/– rubrics and checkpoints.slicer-profiles/– notes + conservative presets (see prior repos for fleet‑specific profiles).checklists/– safety, rig setup, test-day flow, failure analysis.templates/– logs, BOMs, design notebook, presentation deck.docs/– mechanisms primer, tolerances, measurement methods, diagrams.scripts/– small calculators (gear ratio, torque from mass).policies/– privacy & ethics.LICENSES/– CC BY 4.0 (content) + MIT (code).
Vendor presets: See slicer-profiles/lulzbot-mini2/ and slicer-profiles/lulzbot-mini3/ for Cura LE recipes and start/end G‑code. See docs/dual-fleet-pipeline.md for running MakerBot + LulzBot together.
See demo-proof/ for a paired dual-fleet color-swap demo and a magnet-drop insert demo.