Seventh-Graders Build Their Own 3D Printer
A
team of seventh-graders in Ohio built their own 3D printer and are now
using it
to create their own musical instruments.
Four
seventh-graders
at Perry Middle School in Perry, OH, near Cleveland, took up
the challenge in their STEM (science, technology, engineering and math)
class shortly
after school started this fall.
Blanche
Davidson,
their teacher, said her school could have bought a 3D printer for the
class.
"But
one
of the things we're trying to do is get students to learn something
deeply,"
Davidson said in a news report about the project. "If we just gave them the printer, they wouldn't really
understand what is going on with it."
Charlie
Kluznik,
one of the students, said he and his classmates — Jacob Holroyd and
brothers David and Eric Paquin — already knew a little bit about 3D
printing
and were musicians as well. So they decided they wanted to print their
own
trumpet mouth pieces.
"I've
seen
people print all sorts of things," Kluznik said, "mouth pieces and even
entire
instruments, but you have to put them together."
Fortunately,
they
had a design from the 3D printer's manufacturer's software to rely on
but,
now that they've started, they say they feel as if there are few limits to what
they can
do.
Instructions
from
MakerGear say a person should be able to build one of its 3D
printers in
about three hours. However, it took the Perry Middle School students a
bit
longer, partly because they were limited to working on it during their
daily
45-minute classes.
And
they
visited the MakerGear manufacturing facility in nearby Beachwood, OH, during the process to
talk to owners and employees.
In
the
end, it took them about a month to finish the project.
Said
Davidson,
their teacher, "They have a deep understanding of how it works, and
they can troubleshoot it themselves. They became experts. That's what we
want."
Now,
Davidson
is trying to encourage students in a similar class at Perry High
School to take on the same project that the younger students did.
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.