Virtual Lathe - Sacred Heart College
Results
The finishing stage involved the students grinding and cleaning their safes followed by painting with primer and a final coat of paint. Lastly they fitted their electronic circuit and solenoid switch.
Francois reports that students were very excited about this project from the start. Not only did they have the opportunity to create a quality project with 'take home' value, but they were also challenged with a real life situation involving stakeholders. Students had the opportunity to apply their knowledge of microcontrollers but were also faced with a number of problems, especially with regard to power supplies.
According to Francois the Virtual Lathe software is an amazing teaching tool and resource for students and teachers. In addition to boosting student confidence when working on a real lathe, it teaches the core skills of lathe work. The combination of the software and the actual lathe was one of the highlights of this project.
Francois notes that the software feature in which student activities could be viewed in the form of a screen recording, is not a very effective method, since teachers do not have time to monitor every student's work in this way. He feels it would be more effective from a teacher's perspective to have the software automatically record data of student progress on a central database, one which would show individual progression as well as the different progression levels.
He also noted that the software allows too much for student error. Students are allowed to make serious errors on the software without any consequences. He thinks that the programme should not allow, for example, someone to make a 10mm cut at a time.
