By Matt Wettig
Next year Lane is slated to become the first school in Chicago to offer classes in three-dimensional printing.
The school will be partnering with Inventables, a technology hardware company. Recently, Assistant Principal Mr. Ara visited their downtown headquarters to find out more about the “makers lab” that will be up and running at Lane by the beginning of the next school year.
Room 134, formerly the staff lunchroom, will be repurposed into a 3D printing lab. The room will be outfitted with Macs and is already outfitted with air conditioning. All that is left to be done is the electrical configuration and purchasing the equipment. The room will also be painted with whiteboard paint, allowing students to see their ideas come to fruition in a more interactive way.
“Learning how to use [the software] is the best part, it’s relatively simple,” Ara said.
It essentially combines engineering, computer science, and art into one classroom. The lab would consist of 3D scanners, 3D printers, a computer lab, and multiple types of cutting machines for different materials.
“You’re going to be seeing this a lot more in years to come,” Ara said. “All the schools will want to have one, we just want to be way ahead of everybody else.”
An example Ara gives of a product that could be created is a skateboard. The parts can be designed, the wood beveled, and designs printed on, all without leaving the classroom. Also, when the robotics team is building a robot and may need a part, they can design it and have it in a day, opposed to ordering something and having to wait.
“Students can walk in the door and have a finished product in their hands in 20 minutes, that’s the beauty of it,” Ara said.
One of the only problems Ara envisions is not being able to offer the class to all the students interested in it. He compares it to Lane’s sound engineering class, another popular class that many students could not take because of the limited space.
He does not see fundraising the project to be much of an issue, as prices have dropped tremendously since the technology first arose. The most expensive model that the Inventables currently offer is $2,199.
“The best part will be seeing what students can come up with. Students can make their own radio, guitar, an IPod dock even. The possibilities are endless,” Ara said.
Ara believes that there are students here that are capable of engineering something worthy of being patented.
There is not a certain student he sees the class geared towards, there will not be prior experience needed in any field to enroll. Ara hopes that it will open up “a whole new perspective” for students to think of things differently and possibly even start up their own companies right out of high school. Once students are familiar with the software, they can make “pretty much anything they can think of.”
“I know what is going to come out of this class is like nothing anyone has ever seen,” Ara said.
