Falls High School Engineering Designs Come To Life

From Menomonee Falls School District: When Intro to Engineering Design students at Menomonee Falls High School were given the task of designing a toy with moving parts, they were offered help from Big Systems of Menomonee Falls to produce the plastic components, and bring the designs to life.

The project required students to design and build a prototype of a hand-operated, moving mechanical toy for elementary school kids. The students worked on the project from sketched concepts to designing and animating the toy in a 3D modeling software commonly used in the manufacturing industry. Click here to see the design animation.

The students’ designs required several small parts to create a working mechanism. That’s where Big Systems stepped in to help. The company offered the use of several 3D printing systems at their facilities to make these parts. “Using our Markforged 3D printing systems, we were able to take the student designed parts files and print everything the students need to assemble their machine,” says Cyndi Boerner of Big Systems. “The printers used are capable of creating very strong, accurate parts. The resilience demonstrated in these parts offered the students a project that would continually perform as needed.”

“The donation made by Big systems for the project has helped students bring their project to life,” says Abhirami Coimbatore Gowrisankar, IED teacher at Menomonee Falls High School. “For me as a teacher it has been rewarding to bring community members, like Big Systems, into the classroom and to see the immense sense of pride the students had completing this project.”

“This course has been a very exciting for me this year,” says Joy Lynch, a Freshman at MFHS. “I came into this course without ever touching the design software. I finished not only with a strong knowledge but a comfort level with it.”

Click here for more photos of class and finished projects.

Photo courtesy of Menomonee Falls School District (Reegan Chisholm, a senior at Menomonee Falls High School, shows off her carousel toy to representatives from Big Systems in Menomonee Falls. Joe Jones – President; Dennis Davison – Senior Product Applications engineer; Cyndi Boerner – Business Development Representative.)