Willowbrook students enhance engineering skills through machine-building project

On April 28, 14 students in Willowbrook Career and Technical Education Teacher Josh Zwart’s Project Lead The Way (PLTW) Principles of Engineering class showcased the marble-sorting machines they built.

The project was a capstone of the course to highlight the concepts students learned throughout the school year and gave them insight into the role of an engineer as they built and modified their machines. They had three weeks to design their machine, which had to meet the following criteria:

• The marble separation process must be fully automated.
• The machine must successfully separate commingled recyclable materials into individual holding bins.
• The sorting process must be efficient (two minutes max).
• Only the following materials can be used: VEX Robotics kit, items from home such as magnets and cups, custom-made parts created with the school’s 3D printer.

The project focused on collaboration and the PLTW design process, where students define the problem, generate concepts, develop a solution, construct and test a prototype and evaluate the solution.