Design and make a product or prototype that improves the day-to-day of Juaísca Rodriguez, a double amputee high performance paratriathlon athlete training in El Paso, Texas. Register your teams today to access free live and recorded workshops, check-ins, and toolkits from our award-winning team of STEM instructors and fabrication engineers. 
2022-2023 END-USER
Juaísca Rodriguez is a Venezuelan Paralympic Athlete that represented Venezuela in six different events in 2016. She suffered a double amputation due to meningitis when she was a dentistry student and on the verge of qualifying for the national water polo team in Venezuela. When the political crisis blew up in Venezuela, Juaísca knew it was time to begin the legal process to immigrate to the United States. She is still in that process and currently lives in a women’s shelter in El Paso, Texas. Juaísca passed by the Fab Lab often on her cycling trainings and one day, her curiosity got the better of her and she came in to speak with the team. She talked about her challenges as a differently abled athlete looking for custom attachments for different training gear and modification for bicycles. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect as we were planning the Assistive Device Challenge. We told Juaísca about the opportunity and she was very excited to be the 2022-2023 Ender User for the Challenge.
In partnership with UK-based company, PrintLab, Fab Lab will be giving a series of virtual workshops that will prepare High School students to submit to the Make:able challenge sponsored by PrintLab and Autodesk.
CHALLENGE TIMELINE
Dates to be announced in Fall 2022
Welcome to Make:able Challenge
In this kickoff event, we will be introducing participants to Fab Lab and PrintLab’s Make:able Challenge. We will recap last years challenge and introduce our new end-user, Juaísca Rodriguez. Lastly, we will cover important information like expectations, workshops timelines, and deadlines.
Design Thinking / User Experience Design
We’ll give an introduction to assistive devices, the Make:able challenge, and break down the challenge requirements. Utilizing Juaísca’s user profile video, students will build empathy while learning about human-centered design by understanding her unique needs. Participants will understand how to identify and differentiate between a problems and parameters, as well as learn research strategies and challenge mapping.
Engineering Design / Prototyping
We will be brainstorming and sketching concepts, and introduce lo-fidelity prototyping. In addition, students will start to create design solutions using the engineering design process and begin their prototyping journey.
3D Printing 101
We will be looking at an overview of 3D printing, rapid prototyping, materials, and limitations. Next, we will be giving an introduction to Autodesk Fusion 360 and Tinkercad in order to convert sketches to 3D digital files. Topics to be covered include additive manufacturing processes, FDM vs SLA, and 3D modeling quickstarts.
3D Printing Deep Dive
Participants are introduced to more advanced tools in Autodesk Fusion 360, new features, and workflows. Participants will learn how to combine ideas from their brainstorming sessions and initial prototypes to begin translating them to CAD files. We will cover concepts to improve the printability of your design such as overhangs, support, bridges, orientation, part consolidation, wall thickness, and more.
Evaluations and Presentation
In this final workshop, we will cover testing and evaluating solutions to find areas of improvement, and give best practices for documenting the design process to tell an inspiring story for submission.
Check-in and Feedback
One-on-one meetings with teams to evaluate progress and provide feedback.
Check-in and Feedback
One-on-one meetings with teams to evaluate progress and provide feedback. Last day to submit files for 3D printing.
Local Submission and Final Evaluation
One-on-one meetings with teams to evaluate project submissions and provide final feedback before submission deadline.
Final Submission to Make:able Challenge