Digital Fabrication Foundations

Get an introduction to Digital Fabrication while building your own personal display!

Get an introduction to Digital Fabrication while building your own personal display! This five-week course is designed as an overview to the various areas of Digital Fabrication: Laser Cutting, 3D Printing, Electronics, and Coding. Each session covers a new area, and builds upon the knowledge you gain to create a finished product. Successfully completing this course enables you to use all the areas of the Digital Fab Lab. What You'll Make A Personalized Digital Dashboard - customize your LED display to show the time, weather, countdowns, lamp modes, and more! Switch through your displays at the touch of a button.  A plywood-framed LED display with a 3D printed housing, driven by an ESP32 microcontroller. The project introduces laser cutting, circuit building, microcontroller programming, and CAD modelling in sequence, with each week's work feeding into the next. All materials are included in the course registration cost, and students take the finished dashboard home. What You'll Learn Laser cutter orientation and safety practices Designing and preparing files for laser cutting Reading and building a simple circuit Using a multimeter to measure voltage, resistance, and continuity Using electronics hand tools Introduction to ESP32 microcontrollers and simple coding CAD modelling and preparing files for 3D printing Troubleshooting and final assembly