Plastics, wood, laser, and 3D printing
This Hub houses a comprehensive range of facilities to produce artefacts relating to plastic, wood, laser, and 3D printing work.
Working directly with materials, students learn the art of construction through making and refining their work.
Tradition dovetails innovation with a mission to challenge convention and create relevant and innovative design solutions. A range of outputs can be achieved in the hub using a wide selection of materials and processes individually or in combination, including woodwork, plastic prototypes, and laser engraving and cutting.
Wood workshop
The wood workshop enables the manufacture and construction of highly finished working objects on both large and small scales.
The area houses an outstanding range of equipment, which, when combined with our technician's tuition and expertise, enables students to produce professional end products. The quality of projects produced in this workshop are so high that many of our students have gone on to win industry competitions and briefs or started their own businesses.
Processes and methods of fabrication that can be accommodated include bending and laminating plies of wood, cutting, drilling, sanding and planing of materials, assembly and gluing up, and the joinery of components using mechanical connections and fasteners. Finishing techniques include painting, sealing, staining, oiling, and waxing.
Plastic workshop
This facility supports hot and cold processing, shaping, and forming for a variety of thermoplastic materials.
It houses a variety of thermoforming processes that have been developed to change the shape of thermoplastic sheet by exploiting this property. These include vacuum forming, line bending, drape forming, and presswork.
Typical materials used include cast and extruded acrylic (Perspex), high-impact polystyrene (HIPS and PVC), and polypropylene (PP). Plastics can be cut using our traditional woodworking tools, such as the bandsaw, jigsaw, pillar drill, and router. We also have a dedicated plastics Varga circular saw and Hegner fretsaw to allow for straight and curved cutting with fine-pitched blades to reduce melting and chipping.
- CR Clarke 750 FLBH vacuum forming machine
- CR Clarke 200 FDH fan circulated oven
- CR Clarke 1000 element strip heater/line bender
- Varga VA1 plastics circular saw
- Hegner multicut quick fretsaw.
Laser facilities
Our state-of-the-art laser cutter can cut and engrave materials to a high degree of accuracy, producing a self-finished, polished edge.
The flatbed laser cutter can be booked for cutting or engraving a wide range of sheet materials and fabrics and students will receive one-to-one tuition from technical tutors to produce creative work.
The user is first required to produce design files using Illustrator. The laser can then be used to cut through materials such as paper, card, fabrics, MDF, plywood, and acrylic up to a depth of around 6mm thick. It can also engrave and raster (etch) the surfaces of the materials. Through experimentation there is potential to work with thermoplastics to create repeated two-dimensional parts through the laser-cutting process. These can then be augmented by thermoforming to produce three-dimensional forms.
- CadCam FB1550 flatbed laser cutter (50W)
- Ethos software.
