Making the most of a laser cutter and engraver in the art room

Wow. Has it been a month already? 

Time is really flying now that we are back in the building full time. This summer I took a 35 hour STEAM boot camp which was some of the best PD I've had. Completing those hours gives me permission to loan out equipment for my students to use and we have been having a blast since the Dremel Digilab arrived last month. 

We started pretty slow. I printed out some tests during class time to pique their interest. It's loud and the room sometimes smells like a campfire, so when it's on, it's pretty hard to ignore. It was still early days, so I had some nibbles. 

A few days later I casually mentioned that anyone who had finished their line pattern project could do a test piece on the machine and we would turn their black and white design into a keychain or pendant. Two students came forward to try it out.

As we moved on in our daily lessons to positive and negative space, the temptation was too great, and I threw out my traditional lesson and had the students design a wooden stained glass suncatcher.  Most of the students wrapped up on Friday. There were a few absent who still need to assemble, but I am so proud of their efforts. 

They had to plan their design, photograph it with no keystoning or shadows and convert the file to an svg to create a cut path. I had students proof the machine as we ran a perimeter test and then their piece was cut. 

They painted the wood black and then inserted their colored acetate pieces on the backside. The machine takes 3-8 minutes to cut, depending on the complexity of their design, so I had a bunch of early finishers. Teacher brain kicks into overdrive and even though this is not when I normally teach printmaking I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I had students glue their cut out pieces to cardboard, leaving the space from the suncatcher empty. Did a quick demo to the first student to ink up her plate and pull prints. Asked her to teach the next one who finished...and so on. 

A two for one project! They really enjoyed this and took turns printing from each other's designs. And now that they have this basic understanding of printmaking, we should be able to go deeper when we actually get to that unit!