The majority of things I weld & fabricate for myself are out of necessity. I have always honestly enjoyed problem solving. Unfortunately my wife doesn’t get to see that aspect of me as much at home as my coworkers have on various jobs.
My students keep track of their grades in lab packets. I have large groups of students who are in various stages of doing assigned welds. They receive grades at their own pace. Until I built this box it was a little willy nilly as to when they got those grades entered into the computer. It was also a little willy nilly what I actually did with these packets. Students used to turn them in on the fly. It gets stuffed into a jean pocket. It gets pushed into my burn jacket. It gets run back into the office and tossed on the desk. Needless to say there wasn’t a system in place.
It isn’t the end all be all, but it has worked out really well thus far. When you have a grade you want entered put your packet in the box. I pick them up and enter them on Fridays. I put them right back into the box until Monday when I hand them back to the students.
I didn’t really have a particular design in mind when I started. I wanted it to have ‘directions’ on it, and I wanted it mounted to a pole so it was at waist height thereabouts. I started with the box itself.
That is more or less the engineering part of the project. The rest is fit and finish as far as I am concerned anyway. I decided after the fact that the large slot on top was a little too generous. I didn’t to give a student the temptation to tamper with the packets already in the box so I decided to make the deposit slot smaller. The picture above this has the original width and the picture below shows the plate added to make the slot smaller. It was an on the fly modification that makes the box considerably more secure. I don’t mind the look at all this new way. But if I had it to do over again I would have made the slot smaller to start with.
Either way with the box done, it was time to ‘put it on a stick’ and make a base for it. The base I cut the letters TCA for The Career Academy. Rarely do any of us say The Career Academy though. It is usually referred to as TCA in conversation, so it makes sense to us.
