garyhlucas
Stainless
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2013
- Location
- New Jersey
My 13 year old grandson came home the other day wanting to make Fidget Spinners on our home built CNC mill. So we picked up some HDPE cutting boards in different colors for raw materials. I showed him how to draw it out using the drawing functions in CamBam and then we worked together on creating the machining operations and posted the G-code. He then touched off the tool and we ran the program. After a few trial runs we got the holes adjusted just right to press in skate bearings, and we machined 'buttons' in the scrap from the holes which press fit in the inner race. We made about 25 of them. He ran the machine for a while then started deburring the parts while I ran the machine. The plastic left some fine hairs hanging on but we found that a quick blast with a propane torch cleaned them off and left the surface glossy.
He sold a few to friends in school. However he is not one of the popular kids, so he hired one of them to be his 'sales manager' and the kid sold everything we made! So we started another batch, and a friend came over to help him. It actually was quite a lot of work involved. He sold some more the following week. He had competition too. A kid with wealthy parents had a 3D printer and was making them too. His though were delicate, and sometimes fell apart. So we ran another batch this past weekend.
Then some kid took one of the four his sister had purchased from my grandson and was trying to sell it to someone else and a teacher saw what he was doing and hauled him off to the principals office! He gave up my grandson and the other kid making them too. The principal said it was against the rules to sell anything on school property and that the kids were 'profiteering'. They both got two days of detention, the kid that caused the problem got nothing! Then my daughter starts thinking "What if a kid gets hurt, we'll get SUED" and she won't let him sell the last batch!
He worked his butt off making these things, with me helping him. He learned how to draw using Cad, I also got him Fusion 360. He learned how to use a Cam program to generate G-code. He learned how to run the CNC mill. He learned about calculating costs, profit margins, and selling. In other words, a fabulous lesson in entrepeneurship!
All the idiots in the administration at the school could see was a couple of kids breaking the rules!
He sold a few to friends in school. However he is not one of the popular kids, so he hired one of them to be his 'sales manager' and the kid sold everything we made! So we started another batch, and a friend came over to help him. It actually was quite a lot of work involved. He sold some more the following week. He had competition too. A kid with wealthy parents had a 3D printer and was making them too. His though were delicate, and sometimes fell apart. So we ran another batch this past weekend.
Then some kid took one of the four his sister had purchased from my grandson and was trying to sell it to someone else and a teacher saw what he was doing and hauled him off to the principals office! He gave up my grandson and the other kid making them too. The principal said it was against the rules to sell anything on school property and that the kids were 'profiteering'. They both got two days of detention, the kid that caused the problem got nothing! Then my daughter starts thinking "What if a kid gets hurt, we'll get SUED" and she won't let him sell the last batch!
He worked his butt off making these things, with me helping him. He learned how to draw using Cad, I also got him Fusion 360. He learned how to use a Cam program to generate G-code. He learned how to run the CNC mill. He learned about calculating costs, profit margins, and selling. In other words, a fabulous lesson in entrepeneurship!
All the idiots in the administration at the school could see was a couple of kids breaking the rules!