Stand-up Desks

The hard work at our Student Computer Innovations and Fabrication Institute (SCIFI) continued all the way up to the end of the school year. The latest project of the ACS innovators aimed to help alleviate fatigue associated with prolonged sitting at a desk in the context of distance learning. To achieve the task at hand, the creators used the facilities at our makerspace, situated at the foot of the America for Bulgaria Campus Center. Equipped with a laser-cutter, 3D printers, Computer-Assisted Design facilities, and a carpentry workshop, SCIFI provides the students with opportunities to help our community, with the added benefit of learning while doing so.

The SCIFI Makers have come up with a creative approach to alleviating fatigue: stand-up desks. Ergonomic solutions like these have become increasingly popular worldwide and offer the laptop (or Chromebook) users to work with their devices while standing up for a stretch.

Several ACS teachers initiated the production of such desks at SCIFI. David Yordanov, the manager of the Institute, shared that the idea was born on a 100+ km cycling trail where he and some ACS colleagues discussed the benefits of stand-up desks. “We got to the conclusion that it will be great to prototype one in our makerspace.”

After a long process of design and experimentation, the final model was created using the laser cutter. Other teachers were invited to acquire their own stand-up desks, personalized with laser engravings. The project was starting to gain momentum and that is when it became one of the key SCIFI spring semester initiatives.

The SCIFI Committee were quick to join the initiative of creating over 20 stand-up desks that could be easily assembled, adjusted to different heights, and disassembled. The student makers contributed with additional design alterations and the fabrication of the very first ACS-made stand-up desks. The project definitely was not easy to implement. As David Yordanov put it, “The students and I have learned quite a few lessons from the processes. When producing things at this scale even if the large part of the work is left to an automated computer controlled machine, there is a lot of hand intensive work that needs to be done and in times of a global pandemic, it is quite a challenge.”

We are hoping that the upcoming school year will allow for more in-person creativity and technology interactions in our community, and more projects in support of our school’s mission will come to fruition.