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.

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).

Area of a Triangle

The area of a triangle is one half of the length of the base times the height:

$A = \frac{1}{2} \cdot b \cdot h$

For my Geometry class, I made this set of six triangles to show that as long as the base and height are the same, all these triangles will have the same area.

Each student measured a triangle and found its area, which is a useful exercise in itself to get them to transfer the ideas and equations out of the book, and then the all compared their results. Their calculated areas were all within 5% of the actual value, which was not unexpected given that some small measurement error was inevitable.

Since you can use any side as the base, not everyone measured the equivalent side and height, so I had to demonstrate that similarity as I summed up the exercise.

For the next time I use this set, I’ve marked the one side that is 10 cm on each triangle for students to use as the base.

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.

3d Printable Microscopes

A few interesting, low-cost but potentially lab-grade, microscopes that would be great Makerspace projects for students.

OpenFlexure: Out of the University of Bath, this has a Raspberry Pi at the core that can control the stage, focus, and sensor (using the RPi camera module). Since it’s modular the cost varies with the image quality you’re aiming for, but it looks like you can achieve even high resolution results relatively cheaply. They have great detail on their website, including their own version of Raspbian to install on the Pi, so this looks like an good starter project.

UC2: I really like the look of this building block, LEGO-style, system. It seems extremely flexible and there are some interesting projects that go beyond your standard microscope. There are a lot of designs you can go with, including an Arduino or using a Raspberry Pi and camera, but they claim to get good results just with smartphones. This is a big, sprawling project, which suggests a slightly steeper learning curve.

Hat tip to Maggie Eisenberger for introducing me to these.

Making 3D Periodic Tables

Ms. Fu’s chemistry class were given a project to make 3d periodic tables based on the properties of the elements. A few groups went with Makerspace options, using the new vinyl cutter and laser.

3d Periodic Table showing electronegativity. Laser cut.

Periodic Table relief based on ionization energy. The blocks on this one have 1.5 inch square bases. The colors for the different regions use stains including tea (assam) and blackberry juice extracted from berries from the canes on campus.

The part that took the longest was marking all the columns for cutting. A worthwhile assignment would be to write a program to automatically make the cut-marks in an svg file that can be etched with the laser.

Periodic Table column heights based on density. Laser cut.

Paper columns and vinyl cut lettering on this periodic table.