FITCHBURG -- Ben Cote hopes the skills he is learning making coins, keys, models of satellites and more with Fitchburg High School's 3D printers will translate into a career.
But which careers use these skills?
"Is there one that doesn't?" Cote, a high school junior, said.
Educators at the high school agree and say they are working to integrate the high school's two 3D printers into the classroom.
Since the printers were purchased through a Massachusetts Life Sciences grant two and a half years ago, physics teacher Jamie Jacobs said he has seen students make objects from fidget spinners to replicas of monuments for class projects.
Jacobs demonstrated his own creation, a small blue catapult, that he made on the printer in his classroom to demonstrate a recent class topic: projectile motion.
"I wind up doing a lot of demonstrations with things I print out," he said.
An assignment in his class last year gave students the option of printing out wheels for small battery-powered cars as well.
However, incorporating the device for class-wide projects is challenging, because making items on the vegetable-based plastic printer is time consuming and often takes several tries, according to Jacobs. Some students come in outside of class hours to work on their own projects, he said.
School librarian Dr. Kim Cochrane said she is teaching a course for instructors at the high school this November to encourage teachers to use the printers in the classroom.
"Some people will grab on to it and others will take time, but it is done in lots of different places," she said.
The school's other printer is in the library where Cochrane plans to use it in a book club where participants make objects based on their readings. She said the printer will also be part of the libraries new "maker space," which she is currently developing.
In class, Cote said he has used it for several projects including an upcoming assignment in statistics.
"She is going to have me do a project a little different from everyone else, because I use the printer so much," he said.
He plans to design a three-dimensional graph to represent data provided by his teacher using computer software.
From there, he will be able to bring the object from the screen to the physical world using the printer.
Cochrane and Jacobs said, in industry, 3D printers have a variety of uses from creating homes to printing organs.
At Jacobs's previous job at a medical imaging company, models created from an images of living people's heart were used to plan surgeries.
"Before they did it they had to figure out if their tools would work ... so we printed hundreds of these things for every procedure in the beginning while we were getting FDA approval," he said.
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