Makerspace – Montessori Muddle

Makerspace 2025

As we’re constantly adding capabilities to our Makerspace, it’s useful to summarize our capabilities. I’ve broken it down into Computer Controlled Equipment, Analog Machines, Electronics and Coding, and Computer Hardware, Software and Design sections.

Computer Controlled Equipment

Laser Cutter/Etcher

The Universal 60W laser we use regularly to cut and etch 6 mm thick wood (1/4 inch) and acrylic. The bed is 24×18 inches. It also has a rotary tool to mount water bottles and glasses, and we’ve made adaptors to mount pens (though that’s still a work in progress).

Design is done primarily using Corel Draw and Inkscape, but we usually send print jobs using Corel.

3d Printers

We recently acquired a Prusa XL to go with our Prusa M3, though we have a couple other Prusa machines that were donated that are in the process of repair. The XL has a large print volume, can do multiple filaments, and is substantially faster than the M3. We’re still putting it through its paces, but so far everything looks great.

These days, most student-designed prints are made using TinkerCad, though I have students in my classes use OpenSCAD to do parametric modeling. One of my high schoolers is interested in Fusion 360, and I’m hoping they’ll be able to give a couple classes on it soon.

Vinyl Cutter

Our vinyl cutter can handle rolls up to 24 inches wide, and we’ve used it to make lots of stickers and signs for school (like for the chicken coop). It is limited to the colors and types of vinyl we have on hand (I get removable vinyl for obvious reasons) but student can bring in their own materials.

We use inkcut to send svg files to the cutter, but design is usually done with Corel and Inkscape.

CNC

We currently have an Inventables CNC with a 75×75 cm bed that we use for carving plywood, MDF (and to a degree epoxy resin), and solid wood pieces (we have made wooden swords of oak, pine, and maple).

Jobs are sent through Inventables’ Easel web-based app, mainly by importing svg files. We are still working on an effective procedure for passing Vcarve designs through Easel.

Embroidery

We do have an embroiderer that we’ve used to embroider student designs onto fabric and clothing. You can switch the machine for sewing.

Designs are made in Inkscape using the Ink/Stitch plugin.

dye sublimation printer

We have a printer dedicated to dye-sublimation, and have used it to make prints on wood, acrylic, and water bottles (the Middle School business made a decent profit making water bottles of students and their grandparents on Grandparents Day).

Designs are usually done with Corel Draw and GIMP.

Analog Machines

Lathe

We got a medium sized lathe with a 12 inch throw this summer, which students have used to make all sorts of bowls, vases, mushrooms, and pens. Fallen trees from storms over the last year have provided our work material, so we’ve had to figure out how to work with green wood (high moisture content), and different types of finishes.

Our turning tools use carbide tips, and we’re still exploring the variety of square (radiused), round, and diamond-shaped tips available.

tufting (Rug Making)

One of our alumni sent in a rug he’d made with a tufting gun, and the students liked it so much we had to get a tufting setup. We’ve had a number of rugs made, but it takes a while, so most progress is made on interims or during the summer camp. Now that we’ve figured out that you can use non-toxic Elmer’s glue on the backs of the rugs, we can do it all in the Makerspace (and don’t have to leave the rugs outside for days to de-gas).

epoxy

Students have used epoxy to make everything from river tables, to chess-boards, to coasters, to earrings. We’ve acquired quite a variety of molds over the years. We’ve had to dedicate a special table for the epoxy projects because it gets pretty messy.

Carving

We’ve picked up a variety of chisels and tools for carving, and students have demonstrated impressive patience in using them to create, mainly, cooking utensils (one student tried to do a bowl before we got the lathe). We’ve also had to get a sharpening stone setup (that we’ve also used on the non-carbide lathe turning tools).

Spray Paint Art

A couple years ago, one of our students spent a lot of time exploring spray-paint art, especially making planet paintings, so we now have system and a lot of spray paint (and graffiti remover for when things spill over onto work surfaces) . Planet painting has become a popular part of the Makerspace Summer Camp among the upper elementary kids.

Electronics and Coding

SolderinG

Our Weller soldering station gets a lot of use, and has been great for doing detailed work like soldering PCB parts and electronics repairs. It is, of course complemented by wire-strippers, cutters, and tools (the ifixit tool kit has seen a lot of use, and I am amazed that we more-or-less still have all the bits after about 5 years).

Printed Circuit Boards (PCB’s)

We have figured out a decent process for designing our own printed circuit boards (PCB’s) using Fritzing and having them made by pcbway.com. Our PCB designs have mainly been to make it easier to connect Raspberry Pi Picos to LEDs, sensors, and other components. We do have quite a collection of components (resistors, transistors, terminal blocks etc.) to go on the boards.

LED’s and Coding

One of the primary ways I introduce coding is by having students make lamps using individually addressable LED strips connected to Raspberry Pi Pico microcontrollers. So we do have a stash of Picos, Pico W’s and WS2812 strips.

Microcontrollers

Although we use Raspberry Pi Pico’s for most of our micro-controller needs (they are cheap and we have a system for working with them–based off circuitpython), we also have a number of other types, including Arduinos (used more for robotics).

Computer Hardware, Software, and Design

Tablets (iPads and Supernotes)

Students have done a lot of their initial design work on our Makerspace iPads (mainly using Procreate), but this summer, we had one student make all of their drawing on the Supernote e-ink tablet which made it much easier to transfer the design files over to the computer since they could send both vector (pdf) and raster (png) images to Corel for final finishing and printing to the laser.

laptops

When the lower-school switched over to Chromebooks, the Makerspace acquired about a dozen of the Thinkpads that were being retired. These have been great for us, because we switched them over to Linux and have mounted them on the walls to use their touch screens as interfaces.

However, since the Middle schoolers now have Chromebooks, and we have not figured out an easy way for them to program the Raspberry Pi Picos, or even to do website building, using them, students tend to check out the Makerspace laptops to do their micro-controller and LED work.

Wooden Spoons (and other Cutlery)

Of the trees that were blown over in March’s storm, one was a beautiful old cedar, which, based on the ring count, was over 60 years old. The team clearing the downed wood and brush were kind enough to help secure some of the wood for the Makerspace.

One afternoon, a couple weeks ago, we lost wifi, and it just so happened that I’d recently found a set of small carving chisels on sale, so I suggested to a couple of the bereft students wondering around the lab that maybe they’d like to try doing something purely by hand–like carving spoons. To my utter amazement they were all in. And it snowballed from there. Right now I think 75% of my students are making some type of spoon or wooden cutlery.

It helps that the cedar wood has the characteristic gorgeous red and white banding.

Most of the spoons and spatulas thus far have been hand carved. Seeing the students’ sustained interest in woodworking, I decided to pick up a nice set of carving tools that included a hook for excavating the bowls of spoons.

I have to thank Mr. Seddon for his advice on tools and working with wood that has not been fully dried, aka green woodworking. I had not even heard of green woodworking before, but it has a long history, and a little research directed me on to things like the fully manual pole lathe (I’ve been wanting a lathe in the Makerspace for a while, so I may try to build one this summer).

Woodworking with green wood and hand tools requires close attention to the shape and structure of the wood. Chiseling with the grain is much easier than working against it. Knots can provide elegant features in the handle or bowl of a spoon, but are hard, and much more challenging to carve. Thus certain artistic choices did lead to discussions about woodcarving and metaphors for life.

While most of the work has been done by hand, it would not have been the Makerspace if we hadn’t experimented with some of the computer-controlled machines. One student used the CNC to cut spoon blanks of their own digital design. They were able to just do the outlines of the blanks, since we’re still trying to figure out how to carve objects with three-dimensional relief on our machine. Coach Lancaster suggested we use the laser to etch a tornado on all the pieces as a hat-tip to their provenance, so I’m trying to get a student to make us a simple design.

We do have other plans for the rest of the wood that we salvaged. For one thing, I’ve been cutting slabs using a chainsaw. It still has a lot of moisture, and will take some time to dry (a few years it we leave it to air dry), but that will be necessary for some of our bigger, future projects. However, it has been nice to be able to start putting the unfortunate felling of the trees to good use.

Spray Paint Planets

One of my students really got into spray-paint art this year, especially planets. By the time she was done she’d completed over two dozen pieces; some on paper, some on wood, some on clear plastic or acetate, and some of which we backlit with LED’s. Her paintings are all over the Makerspace, which generates a lot of interest.

However, now that this student has graduated, we’ve had to find another way to teach the process. I’m using the above video as a quick introduction to the process (note: it starts at 36 seconds because the author uses a single rude word in her preamble).

A few examples of students’ work from the Makerspace Summer camp (2023).

The Center of a Triangle

Laser-cut triangles showing the incenter, centroid, and circumcenter of an obtuse (slightly) triangle.

There are a few different ways of looking for the center of a triangle. My geometry students did the section in the textbook, then made cutouts on the laser.

They got some practice designing the triangles using a vector graphics program (Corel Draw). This did require an explanation of the difference between vector and raster images, since the majority of the class was unfamiliar with the concept. Raster images are made up of a grid of pixels, while vector images have instructions for where points go and where to draw lines. Vector images are great for diagrams like these because the files can be much smaller, the lines are more precise, and you can scale them up or down without losing any of that precision.

It turned out to be very useful to have them create the shapes and intersecting lines on the computer. It was pretty easy for them to precicely measure angles and find midpoints, so they could find the center points with much more accuracy than they could on just paper.

Having the final triangle cut-outs were also interesting. The centroid–the point of intersection of lines going from the vertices to their opposite side–is the center of gravity of the triangle, which means that, if you’re careful, you can use that point to balance the cut-out triangle on the tip of a pencil.

CNCing Aluminum

All of a sudden, we have two projects that require us to CNC aluminum.

We managed to make it work with the regular 2-fluted 1/8 inch bit. It cut pretty easily with the settings:

Bit: 2-flute straight, 1/8 inch
Feed Rate: 254 mm/min
Plunge Rate: 76.2 mm/min
Depth per Pass: 0.2 mm

Of note: For the very thin material we tried (0.8 mm thick), I found that instead of using regular tabs, where the machine cuts through most of the material and just leaves a thin tab holding the cut-out pieces in place, just leaving gaps in the design seemed a better option. We have a slight tilt to our surfacing table and it was just way too easy to cut through the entire place where the tab should have been.

Bright and Shiny Things: Programming with LED’s

Teaching programming using the LED light strips is going much better than expected. I tried it with the 9th grade Algebra class during our weekly programming session using a set of coding lessons I put together. I went so well that though we started by having everyone (about 10 kids) share two LED strips, by the end of the year I had three students from that class build their own.

Student built LED strip. — Student’s LED strip on a sword. The battery can power it for at least 15 minutes.

The coding lessons are still a work in progress, but it has them learn the basics by running some of the test programs, then then explore sequences using for loops. There are a lot of directions to branch off after the for loops. I’ve had some of my Algebra II students make static patterns using linear and exponential functions, while a couple of the kids in my programming class used different functions to make dynamic lighting patterns; our hydroponic system (see here and here) now has a neat LED indicator that runs different sequences depending on if the pumps are running or not.

Some of the students who built their LED strips in the Makerspace posted about their projects: LED Thingy and LED Light Strip Project. The process (rpi-led-strip) is not too hard but required them to be able to do a little physical computing (with Raspberry Pi’s), use ssh and terminal commands (terminal instructions), and then run and write python programs.

Raspberry Pi that controls one of the LED strips from a student’s project.

Since the setup uses the same GitHub repository (rpi-led-strip) it’s also easy to update some of our existing projects like the Wall Anchor.

I am amazed at how much the students have engaged with what are, ultimately, very simple systems (a Raspberry Pi and a strip of 20 lights), and I’m really excited to see where it takes us.

PlottyBot: Pen Drawn Plots

The PlottyBot project looks like a nice introductory project for building computer controlled devices, like 3d printers, laser cutters, and CNC machines. It draws designs using a pen, and is built off a Raspberry Pi Zero, which I’ve been using a lot.

A PlottyBot in action (from https://ben.akrin.com/?p=10244)

It’s now on my list of potential Makerspace Projects.

LED Light Strip with Pi Zero

Raspberry Pi Zero controlling a LED strip, with a hardwired clear button.

I wanted to set up a small (20 LEDs) light strip using a Raspberry Pi Zero, so students could learn how to remotely log in to a device, work with the Linux command line, run python programs, and get visible, real feedback on their progress.

Instructions and code are in the Github rpi-led-strip repository.

The repository also has instructions and code for setting up a local server on the Pi so you can control the LED strip via a webpage. Students working on their own LED projects in the Makerspace will appreciate this.

The main idea here was to make the project as simple as possible. The web page is basic with minimal styling, so it should be easy to edit, but I do test out some of the newer HTML input elements, like the color picker. The README in the repository also includes instructions on how to, step by step, add components to the webpage to control the Pi: the “Blue” button is used as the example (it sets the entire strip to blue).

With only 20 LEDs you don’t need an external power supply so everything can be run through the Pi.

Adafruit’s CircuitPython NeoPixel library makes controlling the lights really easy. There are a few example programs in the rpi-led-strip/pyLED/ directory of the repository.

I’ve also included a physical button (it’s optional) that I’m using right now to just clear the LED strip. I may change it to just reboot the Pi, because I anticipate that things will get interesting when I have an entire class trying to connect to one or two devices. So far, I’ve had a small group of four students try this with some success.