This past Fall, HackSchool was asked to build a standing podium for the school. Our school shares a campus with North High School. When we have large events, we borrow the use of their auditorium or their cafeteria. When we do, we don't have our own podium for presentations and events. We generally use the North High School podium and cover their logo with our own by taping a banner to the front.
Our team looked at a few designs on Amazon and we settled on this design.
We did the rough model in Onshape. It's constructed from 3/4" plywood, and the model has locking caster wheels so that it can be easily moved between buildings or to various events.
We looked at a few different options for plywood. Our local big box retailer carries a decent 3/4" oak plywood for less than $60 for a full sheet. Our rough calculations, we can make most of this from the full sheet with the exception one of the inner shelves.
Our rough parts estimate puts us less than $100 for materials. Now, just to rally some kids to help with this build of this.
With a quick drawing of the build and a stop at the local big box store, we were under way to start ripping down the plywood into the pieces we needed.
Our first step was to rip the boards down. One of our students here is helping me with ripping it down using the Rip-Cut Jig.
Next, we cut the side pieces down with a 15 degree angle. It was a great use of a little trig to double check our calculations and the the measurements from the model.
We added six pocket holes in each of the side pieces and did a quick dry fit of the podium! We still need to cut the bottom "drip" edge and the internal shelves, but after a couple hours today, it's looking pretty nice!
