Freshman Build: Lamp project

About the Project 

Freshman year, all students at Lick-Wilmerding HS take Design and Technology, an introductory course to the shops. This course is designed to show students what is available in the shops and guide them into classes they might enjoy later. In this course, we spent the first 3 months learning how to design, draw and render our lamps. Then, we rotated through the four shops to build. Each lamp had to have an element from all four shops: metal, wood, acrylic (laser cutter), circuitry and programming, but that was the only major requirement. 

My Lamp 

In the initial design process, we were expected to produce 100 different designs, and really encouraged to think outside the box when it came to our design. While many of my designs were more complicated, I settled on a simpler base for my lamp in order to accentuate the details created by the laser and plasma cutter. And, since it was my first time working with many of these tools, I chose a design I could execute well while still learning as much as possible. I chose a space theme, and then worked on designing the details from there. 

The lamp project is designed to allow students to explore each different shop and discover what they enjoy most for future shop classes. In addition to DT, we were required to take at least two more semesters of shops classes in our four years. In building my lamp, I learned that I most enjoyed circuitry and wood, and so I chose shops classes that matched those interests.