I teach technology at a high school in Waterloo Ontario. We have used Mastercam for the past 10 years in our gr 9-12 Design Tech, Construction Tech, and Transportation Tech programs. We use a gantry mill to do the machining. We have used Mastercam and our CNC machine to produced all sorts of articles from school rings to robotics parts.

Great idea! We could use something like that at our school. Would it be possible for you to post a digital picture of the setup?

Some projects for high school are shown on the following web page. Hope this helps. Instructors Page

Most of my high school students like to design and machine things they can use personally, like license plate frames, clock faces, plastic gears for projects and face plates for their car stereos.

A group of our high school students will be entering the Skills Canada CNC machining contest this year. Can anyone forward specs. for parts from other or previous contests which they can use to practise?

I am looking slabs of blue machining wax exactly one inch thick. The kind that is used for lost wax casting. Anyone know a source that can supply it? Any help you can provide would be appreciated.

Very much appreciated, this will save my students a lot of time.

We are using Mastercam 8.1 v3 and AH-HA interface software, it works fine.

Thanks for all the excellent advice. Should save us a lot of time when this problem comes around again.

Occasionally my high school student's get the "Boundary Not Closed" message when attempting a pocket operation. It usually takes a while to find either the duplicate entity or unjoined corner and fix it. Can anyone suggest a quick / efficient procedure for correcting the problems which could cause this message.

Dan, I will send you an e-mail with the picture attached just in case you are still not able to get to the picture.

I will look into the engraving tool, thanks for the input.

I am about to purchase some .01" and .005" diamter flat end mills to machine small lettering in blue carving wax. Is there an advantage to using either a 2 flute or 4 flute cutter?

Thanks for the ideas. I changed the font slightly to create larger islands, reduced the spindle speed, set all cut directions for climb milling and used compressed air. I am not sure which change solved the problem but the lettering cut fine.

I am working on a project that involves pocketing lettering using blue machinable wax. I am using a .01" flat end mill to pocket letters which are .08" to .10" in height. Depth is set to .018 I am having trouble with some of the inner portions of the letters breaking off. Any ideas on how to prevent this, either during the design or machining process.

I think both questions and practical applications have their place. Answering questions after learning theory provides immediate feedback regarding concepts understood and those still needing more work. I consider this assessment to be formative and it does not count towards a student's mark. The Just-In-Time instructional software I am using with my high school students has interactive questions built into each of the concept lessons. Ultimately, the grade I give a student depends on how well he or she can use Mastercam to create and machine a finished product.

As a high school technology teacher I am always on the look out for CAD-CAM projects. Below is a project description with a link to the project file (this is my first attempt at posting so please let me know if you can't get at the file). I would like to invite others to share their projects. A Christmas project that worked well as a charity fund raiser: XmasProject.jpg This project was produced by grade 10 students using Mastercam and a CNC router. It involves simple 2D design and machining to create a series of blocks with lettering and holly. The ornament on top of the blocks was cut and painted by hand. Materials cost for this project was about $4, they sold out quickly at $30