META24 WORKFORCE LAB · GRADED TO THE CORE · PROJECT-BASED · INDUSTRIAL DESIGN & MANUFACTURING · THE LAB'S YEAR · MIDDLE SCHOOL · UPPER SCHOOL · GRADE 6–12 · 1 CREDIT · META24 LAB COMPETENCIES
Industrial Design & Manufacturing · the year
The Fab Shop · Industrial & 3D · in The Fab Shop · Industrial & 3D
The craft · drafting · CAD · materials · the machines · design for manufacture — the campus design & parts department
This year is laid from the lab’s own calendar — every course inside the lab end to end, then its floors — not written quarter by quarter. The weeks are the lab’s; the quarter windows are the catalog’s.
THE MIX · HOW MUCH OF EACH CORE SUBJECT THIS COURSE CARRIES · IN ORDER
MATHCODING & AITECHNOLOGY & TRADESREADING & WRITINGSCIENCEART & DESIGNHISTORY, GEOGRAPHY & HUMANITIESBUSINESS & ENTERPRISE
The squares are a picture of a course — how much of each core subject its own rooms carry, read from the rooms’ text — never a score of a student. Every course in a lab is graded to the core across the board; the squares say which columns it feeds most.
WHAT YOU WILL BE ABLE TO DO
- Read + make orthographic drawings
- Design for the machine (FDM/laser/CNC)
- Cost a part to true unit cost
AT A GLANCE · 36 WEEKS
Q1 The Craft · form, function, cost → The Course · The Craft — A CAD-to-cut part
Q2 The Course · The Craft → The Course · Subtractive & Forming — A production run
Q3 The Course · Subtractive & Forming → The Course · Operations — A CAD-to-cut part
Q4 The floor — A production run
THE COURSES INSIDE THIS LAB · 6
THE ROOMS · 8 · BEHIND LOGIN
Semester 1
WEEKS 1–18 · QUARTERS 1 AND 2Quarter 1 · The Craft · form, function, cost → The Course · The Craft
WEEKS 1–9 · IN THIS OFFERINGTHE WEEKS · THE ROOMS EACH ONE OPENS
WK 1Form, Function, CostTHE CRAFT · FORM, FUNCTION, COST
Every manufactured object was designed by somebody — and most were designed badly. Learning to see that is where the job starts.
WK 2Think in Three Views
Before the software, the language. CAD will draw whatever you tell it — including nonsense. Drafting teaches you to think in three views so you catch the nonsense first.
WK 3Change One Number
CAD isn’t digital drawing — it’s building a part out of numbers and rules. Change one number and the whole part re-solves. That’s the superpower; constraints are the seatbelt.
WK 4The Whole Gamut
The week that makes the lab real. Materials taught as a DECISION, not a list — because the wrong material fails in the field, sometimes dangerously.
WK 5Match the Make to the Maker
Same design, five machines, very different results. The decision is one question: build it UP, cut it AWAY, or form it — and which machine does that best?
WK 6The Iteration Loop
The last mile: designing so the part actually comes out right — and treating every failure as the curriculum. Design → make → it fails → diagnose → revise → repeat.
WK 7What Industrial Design Actually IsTHE COURSE · THE CRAFT
Every manufactured object you touch was designed by somebody — and most were designed badly. Industrial design is the discipline of making objects that WORK: form, function, and cost, all at once.
WK 8The Design Language
Every field has a vocabulary, and this is the one that was missing — the words engineers use for the features that decide whether a part is strong, moldable, and makeable.
WK 9Drafting — the Universal Language
A drawing is how an engineer’s idea travels to a machinist in another country and comes back as the right part. Drafting is the universal, unambiguous language of manufacturing — three flat views that fully describe a…
THE PROJECT · WHAT THE QUARTER IS FOR
A CAD-to-cut part
The question. Can you read + make orthographic drawings?
The make. A CAD-to-cut part
The evidence. Handed in through The Fab Shop · Industrial & 3D’s own surface and kept in My Work; the Report reads it from there.
Quarter 2 · The Course · The Craft → The Course · Subtractive & Forming
WEEKS 10–18 · IN THIS OFFERINGTHE WEEKS · THE ROOMS EACH ONE OPENS
WK 10CAD — Building It in the ComputerTHE COURSE · THE CRAFT
CAD is where the design becomes a real 3D model you can measure, test, and send to a machine. The superpower is PARAMETRIC thinking: every feature is driven by a number and a relationship, so changing one dimension…
WK 11Prototyping + the AI Reality
A prototype’s job is to ANSWER A QUESTION, not to be pretty — and iteration is the whole curriculum. This week also delivers the lab’s honest core: AI now generates geometry instantly, but it does NOT tell you if the…
WK 12The Technologies — “3D Printing” Is Six ThingsTHE COURSE · ADDITIVE
“3D printing” isn’t one thing — it’s at least six completely different technologies, each with its own strengths, costs, and failures.
WK 13The Machine Tiers — What Money Buys
The same technology (FDM, say) exists from a $200 home printer to a $200,000 industrial one — and the difference isn’t “better,” it’s specific: repeatability, tolerance, material range, reliability, and certified…
WK 14Materials — Every Filament and What It’s For
A 3D printer is only as good as the material in it, and each filament is a real engineering trade-off. PLA is easy but softens in a hot car; PETG is the real-parts default; carbon-fiber is stiff but destroys a brass…
WK 15The Engineering — Calibration
The week that separates operators from engineers — pure engineering: measuring, math, and empirical science on a real machine. A calibrated printer prints to spec; an uncalibrated one prints garbage.
WK 16Design for Additive (DfAM) + Post-Processing
Designing FOR 3D printing is different — you design around orientation, supports, and the process’s real tolerances.
WK 17Applications at Scale + the Break-Even
Where 3D printing actually earns its keep — from the everyday jigs and fixtures that quietly run every factory, to end-use production parts, to the printed housings for the electronics you’ll build in Track 4.
WK 18CNC Machining — Cutting It AwayTHE COURSE · SUBTRACTIVE & FORMING
Additive builds up; subtractive starts with a solid block and CUTS AWAY everything that isn’t the part. CNC machining is the backbone of real manufacturing — the tightest tolerances, the strongest metal parts.
THE PROJECT · WHAT THE QUARTER IS FOR
A production run
The question. Can you design for the machine (FDM/laser/CNC)?
The make. A production run
The evidence. Handed in through The Fab Shop · Industrial & 3D’s own surface and kept in My Work; the Report reads it from there.
Semester 2
WEEKS 19–36 · QUARTERS 3 AND 4Quarter 3 · The Course · Subtractive & Forming → The Course · Operations
WEEKS 19–27 · IN THIS OFFERINGTHE WEEKS · THE ROOMS EACH ONE OPENS
WK 19Laser Cutting — Light That Cuts (and the NEVER List)THE COURSE · SUBTRACTIVE & FORMING
A laser cutter is the maker-space workhorse: a beam of focused light vaporizes a thin line through wood, acrylic, leather, and paper, driven by the same vector paths as your designs.
WK 20Metal Fabrication — Cutting, Bending & Joining Sheet
Sheet metal is everywhere — enclosures, brackets, panels, frames. Fabrication is its own craft: you shear or punch flat blanks, bend them on a brake, and join them by welding or fasteners.
WK 21Injection Molding — Where the Mold IS the Product
Almost every plastic thing you own — the phone case, the bottle cap, the LEGO brick — was injection molded: molten plastic forced into a steel mold, cooled, ejected, repeat, thousands of times an hour.
WK 22What Automation Is — Sense, Decide, ActTHE COURSE · AUTOMATION, ROBOTICS & AI
Strip away the buzzwords and every automated system — a thermostat, a robot arm, a whole smart factory — is the same three-part loop: SENSE the world, DECIDE what to do, ACT on it.
WK 23Robotics — Arms, Axes & the Cell
A robot is a programmable machine that moves in space to do physical work. The art is matching the robot to the job: an articulated arm, a fast SCARA, a delta, or a collaborative cobot — each a different shape with…
WK 24Code + Machinery — Making Machines Talk
Automation is machines cooperating — and machines only cooperate if they speak a shared language. This week is where code meets metal: the G-code that drives motion, the Python that ties systems together, and the…
WK 25AI in Manufacturing — Powerful, and Only as Good as Its Data
AI is real and useful on the factory floor — spotting defects a human eye would miss, designing lighter parts, predicting breakdowns. But it’s not magic: an AI is only as good as the DATA you train it on.
WK 26Quality Control — Proving It’s RightTHE COURSE · OPERATIONS
Making a part is half the job; PROVING it’s right is the other half. Quality control is measuring against a spec — but the deep lesson is that tolerance costs money (tighter = more expensive, so you spec only as tight…
WK 27Predictive Maintenance — Fixing It Before It Breaks
A machine that breaks down mid-production is a disaster — lost output, scrapped parts, emergency repairs at the worst time.
THE PROJECT · WHAT THE QUARTER IS FOR
A CAD-to-cut part
The question. Can you cost a part to true unit cost?
The make. A CAD-to-cut part
The evidence. Handed in through The Fab Shop · Industrial & 3D’s own surface and kept in My Work; the Report reads it from there.
Quarter 4 · The floor
WEEKS 28–36 · IN THIS OFFERINGTHE WEEKS · THE ROOMS EACH ONE OPENS
WK 28The craftTHE FLOOR
The floor — the work is done in the room, logged in the room, kept in My Work.
WK 29Drafting
The floor — the work is done in the room, logged in the room, kept in My Work.
WK 30CAD
The floor — the work is done in the room, logged in the room, kept in My Work.
WK 31Materials
The floor — the work is done in the room, logged in the room, kept in My Work.
WK 32The machines
The floor — the work is done in the room, logged in the room, kept in My Work.
WK 33–36Design for manufacture — the campus design & parts department
The floor — the work is done in the room, logged in the room, kept in My Work.
THE PROJECT · WHAT THE QUARTER IS FOR
A production run
The question. Can you read + make orthographic drawings?
The make. A production run
The evidence. Handed in through The Fab Shop · Industrial & 3D’s own surface and kept in My Work; the Report reads it from there.
A course is a quarter, a semester or a year — nine, eighteen or thirty-six weeks — a project a quarter. Offered as the year, a semester or a quarter, it is the same course seen through a window. A lab is a family: its year, each of its tracks as a course, and its rooms. The evidence is what a student hands in through the room; the Report reads it from there. Nothing in the catalog is a grade.
THE PASS · THIS COURSE AND EVERY OTHER ONE
One pass includes Industrial Design & Manufacturing · the year and every course in the catalog. Pick a pass, or enter a school code; checkout stays on this page.