In the medieval times, one cannot guard a state without great knights and soldiers. And these knights in-turn relied upon great armor, shields (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shield), and swords. In the modern era we rely on defense technologies that reach farther. Still there is a lot learnt from the ancient shields including patience and creativity.
Today my son’s cub scout team got an awesome opportunity to become makers of the mid-eval shield using modern technologies. Thanks to a parent
who works at Google, we visited the Google Maker Lab in Kirkland, WA. The kids were exposed to an array of awesome equipment including a laser cutter, vinyl cutting/printing machine, scissors (of course), adhesive paper, etc.
Below are some of the shields that the kids created. Each shield was custom selected by the cub scout on their own from 100s of images. And then these images were loaded into an SVG software that communicated with the laser printer. Within 90-seconds, the high speed laser cutter made precise cuts from Birch Plywood.
Then we had the “Cub Scouts” symbol printed out on custom adhesive vinyl paper. The fun part 
was watching this tiny printer do the magic. The challenging part was peeling the unwanted parts (aka negatives) and creating the requisite outline pattern. We had a special device that looked like dentist’s picking device to help do the peeling and cleaning job. Finally we used a trace adhesive paper to transfer the vinyl over to the shield.
The step-by-step process created by the parent volunteer was awesome. They had done a dozen trial runs before bringing onboard the 8 kids to make shields today. Their pre-runs helped make the efforts go smoother today. It also demystified the marker process for our kids. I am sure these kids will have interesting ideas in the future. My son was asking if we can get a laser cutter for slicing through bread, for example. Who knows? It may happen in the future. And we will say that this all started from the hour of making shields.
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