Design Your Own Sunglasses

10-45 min

Ages 5-18

What Will You Learn?

Transform your custom digital design to real life sunglasses and experience sight in a new way. Learn about joints, hinges, and lenses by assembling your own laser cut sunglasses.

About Inventor City

Become artists and engineers by experimenting with your digital creativity and bringing your online designs to life with activities from inventor city. Projects include designing and building your own loom, sunglasses, 3D structures, and more!

Each Inventor City activity offers campers the experience to express and grow their digital and hands-on imagination, problem-solving skills, and technical understanding. All activities embrace the relationship between online and hands-on technologies by starting out digitally and later being assembled physically. Activities begin online, where campers showcase and practice their computer and artistic skills by designing their project through pixel art. Their custom designs are then integrated into the physical project, which they can print at home and/or order a laser cut version. Following the step by step instructions, campers then assemble their project and see their digital designs come alive! From putting their projects together, campers learn how to fabricate using different materials, experiment with various joinery methods, and gain confidence about their developing skills. Being part of the conceptual design to production process, campers take ownership of their work, thus boosting their self-esteem and their understanding of the thinking and development process.

Make Your Sunglass

Step 1

Visit https://inventor.city/activity/sunglassesmd. Make sure you look at the size of the sunglasses before you start the activity. Based on your head size, you may have to complete the small or large version of the activity.

Step 2

Once you’ve finished your design enter your camp’s coupon code to submit your drawing

Step 3

Once you’ve received your laser-cut sunglasses or print and cut version, it’s time to start assembling!

Cardboard Print and Cut Instructions

Step 1

Print out your activity pages on paper. Your activity pages include the assembly pieces and your design!

Step 2

Cut out your glasses hinges, frame and arms. Be careful with cutting the details.

Step 3

Glue your paper cut outs onto cardboard. Cut out the cardboard using the paper cut outs as a guide.

Step 4

Attach the hinges to the frame. Attach the arms to the hinges.

Metal Hinge Instructions

Kits that include laser-cut version of your glasses are available through steamlabs and the Maker Shed.

Step 1

The assembly for these glasses is going to be a breeze, however, it will require some adult assistance when dealing with these tiny screws. Also, be sure to keep your hinges separate – it is important the each goes on the proper side

Step 2

Let’s start with attaching the RIGHT arm of our sunglasses. Start by flipping your sunglasses over (so we’re working on the back – the part that touches your face). Grab the RIGHT hinge, and we want to start by attaching the SMALL PAD to the right side, making sure that the metal arm sticking off is pointing slightly downwards.

Step 3

Use the screwdriver/allen key we have included to add the little screws and tighten them in .

Step 4

Repeat step 2 and 3 but with the LEFT hinge Helpful tip: When you’re done with the assembly, add a tiny bit of glue to seal the screws in.

Step 5

The next step will be to attach the arms to the front frame. Use either arm (they’re both the same) and make sure you tighten them with the screws like the last step.

Adding Lenses

Acrylic Lens

The last step is to simply take the included lens and pop them into place inside your frames. They should be a perfect fit, and now you’re ready for some fun in the sun!

Helpful tip: Add a tiny bit of glue around the edges of your lens before you pop them bond to your glasses

Acetate Plastic Lens

All that you have left to do now is take the square of acetate plastic and cut it so it is LARGER than the holes in your glasses (we do this so we have some area to glue them to the back of our glasses).
Once those are in place, we can attach the backing frame in place with a bit more glue, and you’re ready to see the world in style!

What's Next?

Try adding different coloured acetate sheets to your lens and see how that changes the colours around!

Steamlabs is a small team of coders, designers, and makers. They developed the Inventor City website because we wanted to create accessible learning activities that not only influence users to explore their creativity, but also help them learn about science, technology, engineering, art and math – all while having fun.

Their approach to this is simple: create open ended online activities that could easily transform into hands-on experiments.

From there, they’ve produced diverse programs that encourage creative imagination, problem-solving, and have inspired kids (and adults) to embrace the relationship between online and hands-on technologies. Along the way, they’ve collaborated with various science centres and educational organizations in supporting their spaces and in developing unique activities. They continue to create more playful and interactive activities in the hopes of bringing the love of science and learning to kids and adults everywhere.