Article by Juhani Horelli, Furniture Making teacher at Omnia and Elina Kollanus, Mosaic project manager at Omnia
The MOSAIC project teachers at Omnia and other Mosaic partner countries have created new and innovative content for teaching arts and crafts, entrepreneurship, jewelry making and furniture making. At Omnia’s wood department, teachers Mona Olander and Juhani Horelli have been piloting the content developed in the project for almost a year. The latest piloted workshop, “The Future of Making”, has been an inspiring way to introduce new ideas and technologies into the teaching of Omnia’s wood department.
The content development of the four workshops was a joint effort of teachers from CEGEP Canada, SEPR France and Omnia. Each college designed its own workshops for the same wider study module. It was agreed that the content of the workshop would be adapted to the machines, software and staff skills of each school.
Here, teacher Juhani Horelli describes the workshop pilot at Omnia: “In January this year, we started piloting a curriculum developed in the Future of making project with a group of 9 students. We decided to focus on piloting a workshop developed by Benjamin Just, a teacher from our French partner and Mosaic project coordinator: SEPR.
The product to be produced in the workshop was a table that would allow students to combine CNC techniques, laser cutting and engraving, 3D drawing and printing. The table has a lid that was milled for pockets and filled with laser-cut wood pieces. The extension for the legs of the table was drawn and 3D printed, and finally the legs were attached and rounded.
The challenge of the workshop project was how to design and adapt it to our needs. The machines in the workshop at the French school are different from those at Omnia, so all the drawings had to be adapted to Omnia’s machines first.
The students worked in groups of three and were given the task of giving their group a name and designing a table top design for CNC pockets and a laser-cut piece of wood. I also decided that the groups would also design their own logo. This would be laser engraved on the bottom of the table top. Once the designs were ready, they were programmed and milled on our CNC machine to a depth of 3-4 mm.
There were 3 steps: milling the pockets for the leg positions, beveling the bottom edge of the table, rounding the shape and finally milling the pockets for the designed shapes on the wooden pieces.
The following week, the students prepared to place the pieces of wood for laser cutting. Siim Eigo-Saar from Omnia’s Makerspace expertly assisted the students in 3D printing and laser cutting the necessary parts. Finally, the ends of the legs were rounded with a conventional milling cutter.
The three teams were: Ahma (=wolverine), Gargamel (a cartoon character) and Team Sebastian.
As a teacher, it was inspiring to take on the challenge with the students in this project. Considering that this was the project’s first experiment with this workshop, it was a success! It was a pleasure to see how the students took the opportunity to personalize the product with their own design, logo and height, while using the technology at hand. We had a lot of laughs, and the end results were great too!”
This Study modules, developed at Mosaic, will be translated into Finnish and five other Mosaic partner languages and shared via different national online learning platforms for vocational teachers to use in Europe.
