WELsoft Website Notes
Note 7
Target audience: Design and Technology Teachers in Secondary Education
Subject: Introducing CNC machining to pupils
Designing and making by CAD/CAM methods is great fun when you have got into it. But many schools have had expensive machines standing idle for years. Shortage of time to get into it has been and is a great problem to teachers. However, the use of CAD/CAM in the Design and Technology curriculum in UK schools is now a statutory requirement and, slowly, good things are begining to happen.
Graphical software, which makes creation of NC code easy, is expensive. When you have got graphical software but only one CNC machine, how do you manage its use with a class of pupils? How have you gone about it?
What schemes of work and projects have you used to introduce pupils to CAD/CAM? Have you had pupils who have really got into CAD/CAM designing and making: if so, what wonders have they come up with?
To learn more, please go to the Other Info section of our web site and click on the Schools CAD/CAM button.
September 2002