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Valley high school students learn business side of 3D printing
By ROBERT CONNELLY
YOUNGSTOWN
A pilot program for high school engineering students went better than expected as camp organizers hope to take the program into Mahoning Valley schools.
Friday was the final day of Biz 3D, hosted by the Youngstown Business Incubator and Youngstown State University, for 13 area high school students. Participating were students from Youngstown, Boardman, Niles, Warren and Warren John F. Kennedy High School.
The goal of the five-day program, housed in the classroom of America Makes, 236 W. Boardman St., was to explain to students how business and 3-D printing intertwine, with students designing something and also producing a business plan.
“At first, I thought it was mostly going to be the 3-D aspect of it and not as much business as it was,” said Victor Tenorio, a 15-year-old Chaney Campus junior. “What really surprised me is how much work and how much time that you really have to put in for a really unique and really good business plan.”
His group put together a plan for a prosthetic leg for athletes.
“One of the problems right now in the 3-D printing industry is that a lot of the coursework that is designed is all engineering and design focused,” said Rich Wetzel, YBI additive manufacturing business coordinator. “We want to teach them the business model around 3-D printing – show them all the different applications where it makes sense and show them just why you would want to use 3-D printing.”
The program ran from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday. YBI received a $10,000 grant through AT&T to purchase laptops and for students’ lunches every day. That same grant made the camp free for students, who were recommended by their high school teachers.
Each student left with a $25 gift card to a 3-D design website. The second-place winners received a $50 gift card, and first place won a $75 gift card.
“This impacted the way that I look at college because I’ve been looking to get into 3-D printing and to learn what majors there are that involve 3-D printing. It has really opened my eyes to what classes I should take and how I can use it in my future career,” said Liam McCarthy, 17, a senior at Boardman High School. “The biggest thing I took out of this week was how easy it is to actually start up your own business, and it is not as hard as many people make it out to be.”
Boardman High School junior Matt Maroni, 16, echoed McCarthy: “Just seeing this, I wasn’t aware of how much Youngstown has done for this [field]. But now that I know about this, [attending YSU] is definitely a much greater possibility. I wasn’t looking too much at it, but now seeing what it has done with this program, it’s definitely more of an option now.”
Maroni said he designed a laptop case with a hard plastic shell but also with different cooling mechanisms within the plastic to cool the hard drive of a laptop. That design made “it cheaper and more customizable.”
Wetzel and Brett Conner, YBI entrepreneur in residence and an assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at YSU, ran the pilot program. Both said the pilot was successful, and they hope to have another pilot program this fall while also pursuing after-school programming at area high schools. They also hope to take the program nationally.
“When you have a really exciting technology, I think it’s very easy to focus on the technology itself, but sometimes you don’t realize the power of the technology, the power of the application of” it, Conner said. “We know that 3-D printing is a tool that can create new businesses and create jobs, but if we don’t teach this generation that, we could miss out on that opportunity.”
Conner said the projects ranged from Tenorio’s prosthetic limb to Maroni’s laptop case to a custom watch and also a geographical puzzle map of the United States, where the height of each piece was based on population.
“It’s just fascinating to see how fast they catch on and the level of creativity that they can achieve with these design programs. And 3-D printing is something I would have never thought possible when I was in high school,” Wetzel said.