Nestled in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, nearly 250 miles outside Denver city limits, a classroom full of students eagerly awaited their personal keychains to arrive thanks to Carbon Production Network (CPN) Partner The 3D Printing Store. These aren’t average keychains that can be bought online or in store–these are custom bespoke keychains that the students designed themselves.
The 3D Printing Store introduced elementary school students in Crested Butte, Colorado to 3D printing through an interactive design exercise where students created their own keychain and printed it using Carbon digital manufacturing technology. Some students put their names on the sides, while others carefully designed theirs using hearts, stars and the name of their favorite hobby or sport.
However, designing the keychains was only half the excitement. For the students, the real moment of joy was seeing their ideas become reality when they held their customized keychain in their hands.
By printing bespoke keychains for each student, The 3D Printing Store illuminated how 3D printing is not only fun and interesting but also applicable to creating products they use each day. In exposing these students to new technologies, The 3D Printing Store is both inspiring our next generation of leaders and helping to spark interest in pursuing future careers in STEM.
”We know that bringing this technology to kids in rural areas is very valuable to developing our future leaders in engineering and manufacturing. It’s also important to do our part in helping build this industry and showing the value distributed manufacturing.”
Debra Wilcox, CEO, The 3D Printing Store and Accucode 3D
Carbon is proud to partner with The 3D Printing Store and support 3D printing education and STEM learning for students of all ages.