Elephantoytus
Elephantoytus was a collaborative project completed by MICA's Fall 2017 Epic Fail students, lead by Jenna Frye, with the aid of dFab staff Ryan McKibbin and Kevin Cook, along with NASA engineer Paul Mirrel. In partnership with the National Smithsonian Zoo, students tackled the problem of how to work together to design and build a Weeble-Wobble enrichment toy, large and durable enough to withstand the force of the six asian elephants. The final product of a semesters work is a roughly 800 pound toy, constructed out of steel and wood, and weighed down with sand, that was delivered to the zoo in December of 2016. Below, you can see the process that turned dozens of ideas, prototypes, and failures into one huge success. Photos by Jay Gould & class.