What a great time to be at school! In my day we made plastic clocks and chunks of wood, badly hand-cut to give to Mum for her jewellery to hang from. It seems now with CNC machines and digital design you can just knock up a pinball table in around 20 weeks, FROM SCRATCH, check out the cool kids of Camperdown College and their hand made pinball machines.
The image above shows : Zach McKenzie, 15, Ethan Coates, 14, Beau Parlour, 14, Dylan Frith, 15, Daniel Wright, 14, and Matt Hassett, 15, with some of their pinball machines. Picture: Amy Paton from The Standard
Eight students from the year 9/10 CAD (computer-aided design) class have spent nearly 20 weeks working on their own pinball machines, designing and building them from scratch.
The exercise combined digital design with hands-on woodwork and state-of-the-art machinery, this class introduces students to the processes and challenges of taking a design from conception to the screen and then to a physical reality. (The software) can be used in different aspects of their own life, like designing their own house or using them in product design or university subjects. It’s definitely fostered two of the kids’ interest in heading in that direction with further study in computer drafting and engineering. These are skills and designs similar to what you would find in most cabinet makers or joiner businesses, so now they have that technical language that they’d require.- Ben McKenzie, Teacher
Keep up with Ben McKenzie on his very own FaceBook page, Bmacs Design Creativity and Technology Page – What a great teacher!
