Mac Christie D-Tech

Hi, I'm Mac Christie and I am a Foothill Technology student enrolled in the D-Tech academy. Every week we write blog posts about how the week has gone which we put on websites like these which contains blogs from the 1st Semester and the 2nd Semester of our sophomore year of D-Tech, and 1st Semester and 2nd Semester of our Senior year. I will graduate with the class of 2021. I have had 3 other siblings go to Foothill and they were all in the Bioscience academy, they all said they would have rather been in D-Tech though. I mean D-Tech is way cooler then Bioscience, just saying, but when my siblings went to foothill, D-Tech didn't exist yet. I am the gunner of my house in D-Tech, meaning I'm a knight if we are going off the normal D-Tech medieval type of culture. My house, Leviathan, is based like a ship crew and "WITH MERAKI, WE SAIL THE SEAS". We are part of the third dynasty of D-Tech students and hopefully we can set a pathway to help other students follow and grow from. Also yes, that picture to the left is one of the worst pictures of me ever to exist.

My Application:

I made a fx makeup version of the D-Tech logo. It took me a 2 weeks and I found a motherboard chip that wasn't needed anymore and I scored and broke it apart and laid it in my foundation that I built from latex and cotton balls so it was actually the shape of the logo. I love doing gory stuff like this and Mr. Miller (the D-Tech teacher) thought it was really cool which is good cause otherwise I wouldn't be in D-Tech. I kinda always complain in my blog posts but I honestly couldn't be more grateful to be in D-Tech and it all started with this weird application of mine.

CAD:

I have earned mastery in CAD by being able to create designs and by being able to use assembly on CAD. This is most useful for 3D printing but can be used for any machine if you design it and then import a DXF into inkscape for laser cutting and vinyl cutting. CAD is the base for almost everything we do in D-Tech.

3D Printing:

I have learned how to use a 3D printer. I was able to made things like a small key chain with the name "Megan" on it. I made a book end for my art teacher (which he really liked). I also printed a design I made for a "Spinning Figure Design" which I published online. It wasn't the most polished thing I have ever made but it does its job and I really liked it so I'm happy with what I did, especially cause its proudly sitting on a shelf in the D-Tech lab for people to see. This machine is really fun but it takes a while and the 3D printers often need to be fixed so their quality of prints are good which I personally don't like at all because it just takes to long but it is a cool machine none the less.

Laser Cutting:

I got use the laser cutter that we have at our school. I really liked this machine cause it was really easy and fast to use and mad great designs if you did everything right. I also created my favorite thing which was a belt rack for my old tae kwon do belts. Cough cough I'm a second degree black belt by the way cough, anyway it took me a really long time to make and it isn't perfect because of different things I did in the design and I am currently working on instructions for it so when I am done I will put the link here. Also I made a bunch of gifts for people with it and everyone thinks its so cool, cause it is duh, but its a really cool way to have personalized quality gifts. This is my favorite machine.

Propaganda:

I just finished the propaganda station and I got mastery in it. This station is harder to create 3D looking products or certain things. My house created a silk screen all together and we silkscreened all of our shirts. My house mate, Chloe, and me created multi color D-Tech stickers for our classroom. These stickers took a while to make and are still hard to perfectly produce but I personally think they look amazing and are worth the time it takes to make them. This was a really fun station and we got a lot done as a house. This stations had one of the scariest things to me which was the Cannon 2000 printer and let me just say this machine SCARED ME TO DEATH, don't ask me why, I honestly have no clue but it's soooo scary! The silk screener was one of my favorite machines to use and the vinyl cutter was super fun and had so many uses and different things to create and stickers and used so often which is great and just entertaining although it sometimes is super stressful.

CNC:

The CNC is one of my favorite machines, it is super easy to use and looks really cool, although designing is sometimes really annoying and I do need to figure out how to make 3D designs that I can cut for it. I have NO CLUE how to use Fusion 360 but if I try and learn over summer I could be able to make really really cool things to CNC.

Electronics:

I am not finished with this station yet because I only have journeyman but it is super fun to used some of these things and be able to "program" the circuit to do really cool things like the best thing ever, rainbows. Rainbows are just amazing.

IMG_5189.MOV