Innovations spring up like unsuspecting wildflowers when East Middle School seventh-graders meet 3-D printers.
“It’s ridiculous how people make these kinds of things,” marveled Luke Schultz, 12, admiring an elaborate miniature Las Vegas sign that instructor Guy Wadas replicated in a MakerBot 3-D replicator printer.
It was Shultz’s first day in the school’s 3-D Modeling Club. Like the 15 other members, he was hooked.
The club draws students in part because the Eureka 3-D computer program is so doggone cool and user-friendly.
Students manipulate tools, shapes and colors on Eureka to devise their own project – experimenting along the way – long before printing.
“They can take shapes on top and mesh them, then together they can form, shape and bend them,” said Wadas, in his 16th year teaching science but his first year in the Butte school district.
“You can do low-level work to create animated movies, create characters with a plot and storyline or come up with an invention,” he added.