MiM: Toy Creation that Taught So Much More

A student design team from Professor Cindy English’s ITEC 342 Computer-Aided Engineering Drawing course participated in the annual Made in Millersville (MIM) research conference. The conference is one of the largest student conferences among the 14 state system schools that involves over 150 students presenting, performing, or exhibiting their scholarly and creative work while gaining a professional conference experience. This year’s participants presentations were both of the synchronous and asynchronous formats for the virtual event. The synchronous presentations were streamed live allowing the presenters to be interviewed by professors and alumni who give feedback to the students concerning their work.

The creation of the Star Wars Rogue One movie K-2SO droid was a group project application result of designing and 3D printing culminating knowledge obtained during the course. The goal was to achieve a moveable and realistic, yet smaller, duplicate of the droid that was portrayed in the movie. By using the skills taught in the Fall 2020 class, the team was able to successfully reverse engineer, sketch, design, and 3D print the model. To create the finished product, SolidWorks 3D modeling software and MakerBot Replicator/Replicator 2X printers were utilized to design and print the figure. By dividing the model into different parts and using ball joints to connect them, the figure was then able to move its limbs. This project taught various important skills such as abstract and critical thinking, problem-solving, the importance of creativity, working on a team, design intent, prototyping, limitations of materials and output devices, tolerances, and setting goals/timeline benchmarks.

Identified in the photograph are from left to right: Professor English,  Lee Tarter, Ermias Wogari, and Robert Kiesel.

Contributed by: Mrs. Cindy L.W. English, MFA