Intellecta Technologies Pty Ltd

for PICAXE education, Roland CAM, Techsoft CAD, Intellecta control, Atmel, Arm and Microchip education

• Launch on Roland at St Stephens College
• Pacific Pines gets the system underway
• Ipswich Grammar with Roland and Intellecta control technology
• Visual design at Griffith Uni, Gold Coast
• Brisbane Grammar launches the MDX650 and MDX20 systems
• Get together at Downlands,Toowoomba
• Larry and the team at Hillbrook Anglican
• Clontarf host a teacher training session
• Sunnybank and CAD gets a liftoff
• Innovation at Churchie
• Mixing technologies at Geelong College
• PICAXE launches in Melbourne
• Wynnum North and science in CAD/CAM
• Launch of Griffith Uni Project
• PICAXE planning for October 2005
• Westminster and Intellecta project still forging ahead
• Lens design and innovation in physics
• Automate 2005 in Sydney

St Stephen’s College Coomera get into CAD and 3D

Andrew McCaskill is the innovative technology teacher at St Stephens College in Coomera, Queensland. He made a great effort to come in from his vacation and meet with Tony Pugatschew. The MDX-20 was set up in the CAD area and students can quickly run their projects.

Just a word of warning - don’t come into Brisbane on a night when the State of Origin rugby match is scheduled and expect a hotel/motel room. Tony had to spend a cold night in the car outside Coomera - PLAN AHEAD!!!!!                      top

Pacific Pines training

Pacific Pines is an exploding Gold coast area with new houses exploding on every hillside.

The state high school has a great team in the technology area and Scott Humphrey is the main CAD/CAM focus in the school.

The mill was set up and machining shapes in an efficient manner.

Scott is the happy teacher on the left!!!!   top

Ipswich Grammar School gets into CAD/CAM and Control Technology

Brian Tierney and his team of young Griifith Uni graduates are at the focus of a new initiatives in Ipswich. They are into CAD /CAM with mills and vinyl cutters as well as Intellecta control materials.

A training session was held with the teachers to go through the operation of the mill and control materials. An important direction was the implementation of planning and thinking skills as part of the technology program.                                                                              top

Griifith Uni , Gold Coast and machining

Following our long partnership with Griffith University, it was great to get some CAM resources into the Gold Coast campus. Daniel Della-Bosca is the man behind a range of innovative processes in the Design School.

The Z-World 3D printer is another great product that he is running so students can rapidly transform ideas into real, tangible products.

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Brisbane Grammar School

It was a real pleasure to catch up with Jamie Foulger at Brisbane Grammar School. He has been a long term user of Intellecta resources and is now the proud user of a Roland MDX-650 and other machines. His innovative approach to problem solving and documentation strategies with young students is a great skill and it is good to see great educational innovation.

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Downlands College, Toowoomba

Intellecta was invited by Bede Kauter at Downlands College to visit the technology area and support some quick training on the MDX-20 system. Due to some oversight with the camera, the usual number of photographs was not undertaken and so words will have to do.

Thanks, Bede, we will get some shots later!!!!

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Hillbrook Anglican and CAD/CAM

Intellecta set up the MDX-20 at Hillbrook Anglican at Enoggera, Brisbane. Larry Scaroni and the team were very positive about the new addition to their great CAD classroom - open, inviting and friendly.

Students were on task and were very interested in the ability to transfer CAD files to real parts.

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Information evening at Clontarf, Brisbane

It was good to catch up with e number of teachers from the Clontarf, Redcliffe area north of Brisbane. Dan O’Kane was the host and we discussed a number of topics around the PICAXE chip and student designed projects that take in a range of skills and abilities.

Dan is a user of the Roland mills teamed with PCB Design and Make software                                         top

Early morning at Sunnybank State High School

Ross Duncan is the livewire at Sunnybank in Brisbane. The school has a well serviced technology department and the new Roland mill is targetted for a range of Inventor connected designs.

A short, targetted training session brought him up to speed with the basic operation of the Modela Player 4 software including the excellent contour cutting algorithms.                                                              top

Innovation at “Churchie”

Anglican Church Grammar School is a well respected private school in Brisbane and is a long time supporter of Intellecta materials.

Intellecta is proud to be associated with the recent strategy to run some Intellecta icon control models in the innovative Labvolt technology area.

Ms Woodward is the innovator behind the great computer based learning package that takes students through the operation and control of an Intellecta linked washing machine and train crossing model.

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Visit to Geelong College

Geelong College is one of the Prodesktop training centres in Victoria and Intellecta was invited tby David Andrews to demonstrate the new MDX-40 mill. The school has a great technology centre that links the school with the community.

In 1980, The ‘Austin Gray Centre’ in honour of Mr. A. Austin Gray former old collegian and member of Council was opened by the Governor-General, Sir Zelman Cowan.

The centre has that really deep and lingering smell of great wood working centres that also combined ceramics and photography. The place is filled with projects, tables being clamped, pots of glue, chisels, plans and hundreds of well loved wood working equipment.

The MDX-40 was set up on a bench and producing CAM output for a student project. This took place on about 20 minutes and shows the power and flexibilty of the Roland Modela Player 4 software.

A foam part was machined for a student project and was well received by the young gentleman.

Intellecta had the pleasure of sharing a coffee with one of the great old wood workers in the area who bestowed to the school his labour of love - a strong, jarrah wood working bench.

It was great experience to mix the modern technology with the old and the centre reinforces the fact that students still need the skills and experience in hand tools as well as computer technology.

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Great success at first PICAXE course in Melbourne, Victoria

Intellecta, in association with Keith Hoy from DeLaSalle College, Malvern launched the first intensive education focussed PICAXE microcontroller training course. Intellecta is the education distributor of the PICAXE products and is supporting a range of education directions.

This first course was attended by 22 teachers and was run by Dave Donnell and Tony Pugatschew from Intellecta and Keith from DeLaSalle. Dave has been teaching for many years a range of science and technology courses and brought to the course his flowchart curriculum model. This was well received and was an example of how to actually teach the materials in a classroom.

The main board was the 18 Tutorial board and took teachers through switches, sensors, controlling the seven segment display and other topics.

Some teachers surprised themselves in the ease of use of the system and the power in simple applications. One group managed to control a servo system controlled by an infrared input after one day in the course.

The second day introduced the use of the Techsoft PCB Design and Make software and the elementary 08M circuit board that was completely engraved, drilled and routed on the Roland MDX-20/650 or 40 that is available in the facility. Teachers proceeded to solder up these demo boards and were involved in some discussions re modular control boards that can be applied to a range of student directed projects.

Some of these ideas are incorporated in the HB ( Home Brew) series of boards that have been designed.

All in all, it was a great chance for teachers to get together and plan some of the activities. Extension course 2 or Master class 2 is being planned and this will be addressing some of the higher functions in the microcontroller area.

Look at the materials.                                             top

Innovative CAD/CAM in Science at Wynnum North State High School

Wynnum North State High School is the first high school in Queensland to start the CAD/CAM pathway with the Roland MDX-40 mill.

Dr. Beth Brook is the innovative science teacher, together with the great technology teachers, has launched into activities focused on hull design.

Students will design and manufacture a range of shapes and explore the various physics concepts behind hydrodynamic interaction of a fluid over a moving surface - sounds like fun!!

The science and technology staff were introduced to the operation of the MDX-40 and ran through the basic concepts:

• Setting up the tools and heights
• Machining options in Modela Player 4
• Use of Roland software - Dr. Engrave
• Links to Prodesktop and other software
• Fixtures, feeds and speeds

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Launch of Curriculum development initiative

Intellecta has been working with Ivan Chester at Griifth University for many years and supports the innovative Tech ed program.  In August Intellecta and Roland DG sponsored a new project in the education program.

Griffith is the the sole provider of a Bachelor of Technology Education program in Queensland and it has been involved in the preparation of teachers in this field for nearly twenty years. The degree is recognised throughout Australia and overseas as one of the best. Academic staff involved with the teaching of the degree have considerable teaching and administrative experience in schools and a real commitment to Technology Education.

In the second semester of their final year, Bachelor of Technology Education students undertake a "Design and Technology Project". This project requires the students to investigate a particular technological problem and apply their knowledge to the production of a practical solution. Problems may be of a personal, community, domestic or industrial nature

Intellecta and Roland DG have sponsored a project with two students, Chris Gater and Andrew Kirby, to undertake the development of teacher materials to assist new users with the implementation of CAD/CAM in the classroom. Specifically, a Roland MDX40R machine with all the bells and whistles has been placed at the students disposal to develop such materials.

A formal opening was conducted and many technology education experts attended the afternoon session. Thanks to  Mike Berry, Phil Cooper, Dan O’Kane, Neil Butters, Ivan Chester, David Gooch and other educators who made the opening a success.

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PICAXE course planning at Clontarf State High School

Dan O’Kane from Clontarf will be hosting the first PICAXE training course in Queensland towards the end of October 2005. Details will be supplied in the INTAD journal.

The course will follow on the lines of the first course run in Melbourne with focus on developing teacher skills in the microcontroller programming and applications.

Roland mills and PCB Design and Make software will be demonstrated by taking a PICAXE project from idea to completion.

Call Dan on 07 3480 4777 for more information                    top

Intellecta and Westminster project

Callum Martin from Westminster completed a successful work experience placement at Intellecta and has been beavering along on other PICAXE designs for the PedalPrix project. He came down and manufactured some of his special boards on the Roland MDX-20 and PCB Design and Make.

As always the boards were perfect ( use a 60 deg engraving tool at 0.15mm engraving depth) and is assembling and testing the boards over the next few days.                                            top

Mad Physicists project finally sees the light of day

Dr. Tony Pugastchew is one of the founders of Intellecta and was involved in innovative optics education programs when he was a senior lecturer in Applied Physics at the University of South Australia. One project was to undertake diamond tool machining of lenses so students could be involved in lens design projects. Costs and complexity were too prohibitive.

However, with the new Roland mills the situation has changed and he is now able to design and manufacture acrylic lenses either as spherical or cylindrical geometries.

The stimulation came from the need to design a multirange infrared led sensor for robotics sensing. A set of curriculum plans to make a range of lens systems is on the drawing board.

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PCB Design and make with the Roland MDX-20 and MDX-15

There was considerable interest in the engraving, drilling and routing of Printed circuit boards with the PCB Design and Make system running on the MDX-15/20 3D machines.

Circuits were designed and fabricated in a simple and safe process. The designs have tracks and component definitions and the actual layout is undertaken by isolating the tracks by engraving.

The software defines the drilling of the holes and the routing of the board from the surrounding laminate.

The process assist engineers in the important prototype phase of the design and allows a range of simple boards to be fabricated.

On show were boards that we designed on the PICAXE Melbourne course as well as some high density surface mount microcontroller boards.

Medals and unique products made with Roland technology

On show was a range of medals, plaques and products that features the application of the METAZA metal printer and Medal production.

With the Metaza (MPX-60) Photo Impact Printer, you can imprint photos, illustrations, logos and text on acrylic, gold, silver, platinum, brass, copper, aluminium, metallic labels and even stainless steel.

These items are good examples of diverse application of CAD techniques coupled with CAM operations.

Catch up with other companies

It was good to catch up with other companies that have served Intellecta over the years. Bob Hammond from Hammond manufacturing designs and manufactures a range of electronic enclosures that really make it easy to create a professional packaging solution. The product breadth is amazing. Here is a shot of Bob undertaking some beer promotion for VB ( should introduce him to be best beer made in the universe right here in Adelaide by Coopers).

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