Skip to content
The CREATE Education Project would like to thank Ed Charlwood, Head of Design at Latymer Upper School for sharing this project idea.
The project was developed for the OCR Design and Technology J310 2017 GCSE Specification, but it would be suitable for any of the KS4 GCSE or Scottish Higher Design Technology qualifications. This project could also be used for relevant FE courses.
This project is based around open source drone / Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology.
The aim of the project is for students to design and manufacture a 3D printed chassis for a Flexbot circuit which they can control from a tablet or smart phone. Students can them complete a number of tasks and challenges posted on the Drones in Schools website.
Project Resources
To accompany this project, there are a number of supporting resources:
- ACCESS FM Product Analysis Worksheet
- Parts Analysis – detailing component parts of Flexbot for measurement.
- Complete SketchUp Model of Flexbot
- Flexbot CAD files – 3 x .stl part files for Flexbot
In addition to these, the Drones in Schools Project Guide includes a complete overview of the project, project structure and OCR J310 Specification links/references.
Login to download the resources and project guide.
Project Links
This Project Idea was developed by Ed Charlwood, Head of Design at Latymer Upper School.
The project is supported by a website and user community:
- Drones in School Challenge Website
- Drones in School User Community
The Project was developed for the OCR GCSE Design and Technology J310 qualification.
Incorporating 3D Printing
This project has been developed specifically for 3D printing. The main stages of the project outlined in the Project Guide include:
- Introduction to CAD software
- Sketching chassis design including dimensions
- 3D printing a key component to check dimensional tolerances and to demonstrate CAD > CAM process.
- Using Cura to slice and tweak designs for manufacture.
- 3D printing, assembly and testing.
- Iterating improvements including designing the chassis for economy of materials and/or speed of manufacture.
About Project Ideas
“Project Ideas” are a series of ideas shared by the CREATE Education Project to provide inspiration and a starting point for students to develop their own projects that utilise 3D printing for prototyping and/or to enhance the final solution.
Many of the ideas shared would provide suitable starting points for students in Further or Higher Education who are undertaking their own personal projects, allowing them to adapt and extend the projects to develop new outcomes. Some of these projects could also be tackled in a similar way by high school students undertaking individual project work.
Alternatively suitable projects could be selected by teachers and assigned to teams of students in a project based learning approach. A series of editable templates and resources have been developed to support the project based learning approach. These include:
- Project Planning Templates – A series of editable templates for course leaders or teachers to use when planning student projects.
- Presentation Templates – A series of editable PowerPoint slides for course leaders or teachers to use for presenting project stages to groups of students.
- Student Project Worksheets – A series of editable worksheets for individuals or groups of students to use for planning and documenting their projects.
These resources can be downloaded by clicking the links in the right column.