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Interview completed in
December 2007
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Hiroshima Municipal Technical High School was
established in 1924 as Hiroshima Technical Training
School with the motto, “autonomy, respect
and diligence.” Locals affectionately
call the school by its nickname, “The
city’s tech.” The Information Electronics
Department teaches students the fundamentals
required for today’s information society,
including basic subjects such as electrical
engineering and electronics and practical training
in computing, data communications, electronic
control and communications. The high school
also participates in high school-university
projects in partnership with Hiroshima City
University. In 2006, the high school was selected
for the “Aspire to be a Specialist! (Super
Specialized Upper Secondary Schools)”
program by the Ministry of Education, Culture,
Sports, Science and Technology.
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The Information Electronics Department installed
the MDX-40 Subtractive RP machine in January 2007.
It is used for a variety of applications including
third-year student research assignments. It is
also used to create teaching materials and to
manufacture parts used in microcomputer cars*1
for the Information Electronics Club, an extra-curricular
activity for students. |
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*1
Micom Car Rally: A race held between fully self-propelled
line-tracing robotic cars. Each robotic car is
equipped with a one-chip microcomputer.
For details, visit: http://www.mcr.gr.jp/index.html.
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Captions (Mr. Kenichi Yamazaki, Teacher, Information
Electronics Department, interviewed in December
2007)
The MDX has dramatically improved our creativity
and expanded the range of items we can produce.
With the MDX, today we are able to conceptualize
and create products that we never even considered
in the past. I produce my own teaching materials
with the MDX and create materials for other teachers
as well. Using the MDX, I milled a positioning
jig from chemical wood. The jig enables my students
to precisely position the material for processing,
making it easier for them to use the machine.
While I present some ideas and questions to my
students, they determine the specific items they
will produce. For their research assignment, my
third-year students created an acrylic PC keyboard
cover for people with impaired hands and a line-tracing
robot course. The utilization rate of the MDX
is very high.
Captions (Mr. Yukihiro Takahashi, Teacher, Information
Electronics Department, interviewed in December
2007)
I have always wanted to produce microcomputer
car parts from 3D data using Shade CG software.
When I attended a summer seminar hosted by The
National Association of Principals of Technical
Senior High Schools, I saw many processed samples
and discovered many types of chemical woods with
different densities. I knew then that we could
manufacture the parts we needed. To create a microcomputer
car, you must design both its software and its
hardware, including the chassis and electronic
circuits. In the past, we produced the chassis
entirely through manual processes and it was very
hard to assemble all the parts. Since deploying
the MDX, we have significantly reduced the time
spent producing and modifying the parts, and we
can now dedicate much more time to designing the
control program. Sometimes the parts get damaged
during the test runs, but now we can manufacture
spare parts in advance. We can also continue with
other projects while the MDX processes the material.
These benefits together with the efforts of our
students enabled us to enter the Micom Car Rally
this year, which is a national competition. |
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Teachers Takahashi (left)
and Yamazaki (right)
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Course (painted) for the line trace robots
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The removable
jig milled on the MDX
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