Drawing robot template from plan
You can find all Cardboard Robot designs available for free on each project page and in every video I show how to draw the design on cardboard.
Drawing the design by hand is a valuable educational process to train precision, planning and spatial imagination. For a 10-15yo student it may take about 15 minutes to draw the design manually.
One way you can help your students to draw plans faster is to prepare cardboard sheets in the same size as the main elements of robot you are building.
How to read robot plans:
- BLACK LINES – cut this line first
- RED LINES – detailed shapes cut in after the black lines
- BLUE DASHED LINES – bending lines traced with scissors
Printable Robot Template PDF
Because there is always to little time for building in the classroom you might want to speed up this process by using our Printable Robot Templates. This downloadable pdf contains all of the designs in a version adjusted to being printed in A4 format.
How to work with printable robot template
1. Print a chosen design page with a desktop printer – pay attention to printing BORDERLESS or NO MARGIN or SCALE 100% (depending on your printer options) otherwise size specific elements as servo motor holes will be scaled down. Once you got it printed it is easier to duplicate on a photocopy xero machine. You need one copy for each robot.
2. Prepare cardboard sheet and cover it with paper glue
3. Pay attention to cover whole surface of cardboard with paper glue
4. Glue printed cardboard robot template to the cardboard sheet
5. Smooth out the surface of the glued robot template
6. Pre-cut all the parts from the sheet
7. Precisely cut out all the robot parts along solid lines
8. Use scissors to trace bending lines along dashed lines
9. Puncture corners of slots for BBC Micro:Bit and servo motors
10. Use scissors along with ruler to trace holes for servo motors on both sides of the cardboard
11. Gently remove inner element from cut out hole
Finish your cardboard robot construction with the instruction of video manual you can find for each model on the project page.
Cardboard Robot Stencils
Stencils are now also available as DOWNLOADABLE DIGITAL FILES so if you have access to a laser cutter you can make them on your own.
Stencils also simplify the process of drawing robot designs with one big advantage over the printable templates that you don`t need to print or copy anything repeatedly.
It takes about 2 minutes for each student to draw the parts from the stencil that is why our stencil pack include two copies of each stencil to speed up drawing process.
Robot Stencils for Laser Cutting – Digital Files
DIGITAL FILES for laser cutting Cardboard Robot Stencils in SVG format.
Instant download.