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The CREATE Education Project would like to thank Edward Harley, Head Boy at Ixworth Free School for sharing this project idea.
The project was developed for the AQA 8552 Design Technology 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.
The aim of the project is to introduce 3D printing and 3D modelling in a variety of CAD software with a brief to design and manufacture a speaker amplifier for a mobile phone.
Download the Project Guide which includes a complete overview of the project, individual lesson outlines and AQA 8552 Specification links/references.
Project Links
This Project Idea was developed by Edward Harley, Head Boy at Ixworth Free School.
The Project was developed for the AQA 8552 GCSE Design Technology qualification.
An example 3D CAD model by “edditive” can be downloaded from Pinshape.
Incorporating 3D Printing
In this introduction to 3D printing project students will be planning, designing and making a phone speaker amplifier. This will boost the volume from a phone speaker and fits all phones.
By introducing different types of plastics used in 3D printing, we can start to teach different types of plastics to the students and show firsthand the properties of different plastics.
Furthermore, we can teach students about CAD and how to do use various CAD modelling software including TinkerCAD, SketchUp and Blender. Also, we can start to explore the field of CAM with the 3D printer.
For the GCSE course, we can use the 3D printer to prototype design work to ensure the design is working and as the student needs / wishes. We can also produce scaled down models of products to see if sizes are appropriate.
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.