Quote:
Originally Posted by JaneYoung
Chris,
1. Are you saying that you dismantle the appliance and then see what you can make out of the pieces - i.e. simple machines?
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Yes, thats basically it. We give the students intact (or mostly intact) appliances to take apart and find things. The goal is to get them thinking about how things work. And each group will find something different.
Take a group with a printer for example, you'd take it apart and find gears and wheels and such, while a group with a VCR might find belts and springs. It's like an engineering scavenger hunt!... kinda
Sometimes we also let the students take parts they found home with them if they want (so long as they weren't dangerous and their teachers don't mind).
Quote:
Originally Posted by JaneYoung
2. What do the tool boxes have in them?
(I'm thinking about what we would have to supply/carry and what would be allowed - those types of things)
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First off I think I should clarify that the "toolboxes" we used weren't the kind you'd typically find at a store. We made wooden boxes with PVC handles that were just big enough to put a dozen or so tools in and small enough to not take up a lot of space on the tables and be very portable. They're simple enough to make and save money over buying a store one for each group.
As for the contents of the tool boxes, we pretty much just used stuff that any robotics team would have.
- Screw Drivers (a LOT of them, and a wide variety). These will probably be the most used out of any tools you bring.
- Wrenches (for bigger appliances)
- Tin Shears/wire cutters or similar (we supervise the use of these, but they are sometimes necessary for getting through items that are molded plastic or have pieces that won't come apart)
- Hammers (these don't get used to much but they have been useful on a few occasions).
There is also some sharing between the tables as some of the groups would have tools that others would need (different size screw drivers and such). We color coordinated all the tools and their tool boxes with different colors of electrical tape, that way each tool got back to the original toolbox at the end of each rotation.
We also kept a box of "odd tools" available as well just in case an item needed an uncommon tool to take apart (I might even recommend a battery powered drill as it might be useful in some situations). I don't recall ever using any though.
It really just depends on if you know what appliances you have to work with, in our case, we asked the school to collect the appliances so we had no idea what to expect, so we brought everything we could. If you knew what items you were working with, you could just bring the tools you'd need for those items.
In my opinion, if every group had enough screw drivers for everyone in it and one pair of some kind of cutters, you would probably be in good shape as long as you also bring in a box of a few other tools you might need just in case (be prepared). The biggest issue we had when we did it was we didn't have enough screw drivers to go around.
I think thats just about everything. I'll ask my instructor tomorrow to make sure I didn't leave anything out.
