FreeCAD News

A cou­ple of weeks ago on the #FreeCAD­Fri­day hash­tag over on Fos­stodon, Hanser post­ed a love­ly bit of FreeCAD design work for a RC boat hull. It was a great look­ing design, but even more won­der­ful was the sto­ry that unfold­ed in the thread that followed. 

Over in Crail­heim in South Cen­tral Ger­many is the Juze Crail­sheim, a inde­pen­dent youth cen­tre that’s been sup­port­ing and encour­ag­ing the young peo­ple of Crail­sheim since 1974. Glanc­ing over their web­site, there’s lots of com­mu­ni­ty activ­i­ties, med­i­ta­tion, art class­es and more, but it’s also home to the 0xBA5E Makerspace.

The boat design was in prepa­ra­tion for sum­mer activ­i­ty where the young peo­ple got to assem­ble a ful­ly func­tion­al web con­trolled RC boat. The FreeCAD boat design, once com­plet­ed, was flat­tened for 2D export and then the “Liv­ing Hinge” and oth­er joint aspects of the 2D design were added in the excel­lent Inkscape application. 

One snag was that the laser cut­ter, of course, decid­ed to have some prob­lems just when the crew need­ed to cut all the com­po­nents, but the ded­i­cat­ed team got the laser back up and running. 

The work­shop took place and ten young peo­ple between the ages of 8 and 12. Glue­ing and fill­ing and paint­ing the excel­lent boat kits was only part of the sto­ry. The young peo­ple also got involved with sol­der­ing what looks to be an ESP32 device and a motor dri­ver board as well as a 9 gram ser­vo for steer­ing. The use of the ESP is bril­liant as it keeps costs down and a WiFi/Web con­troller can be made that can run from a phone or lap­top, this all reduces the cost of hob­by grade RC equip­ment and increas­es the learning.

We’ve loved watch­ing this sto­ry unfold and wish the Youth Cen­tre and Mak­er­space all the best for their future activities.