Teaming Up with Fairmont Preparatory Academy
By Karissa Campbell, GROWit™, Irvine, California

We believe that integrating CAD and engineering with the K-12 curriculum is imperative, which is why we decided to team up with Fairmont Preparatory Academy. This highly academic high-school offers an Engineering Magnet program, a highly advanced program that allows high school students to build a strong foundation in math and science while benefiting from a cutting-edge engineering lab, a dedicated college/academic counselor, university-level courses and hands-on opportunities such as internships and study trips.  The Engineering Magnet was developed to further the education and career goals of Fairmont students who are exceptionally gifted in math and science-areas where Fairmont’s program excels.

Two students, Nikhil Narang and Aditi Sinha, had a strong interest in learning more about 3D Printing and Additive Technologies and decided to intern with us. Nikhil wrote an article in the Fairmont Preparatory Academy’s Engineering Magnet Newsletter about his experience interning at GROWit and we want to share it with you.

GROWit™ 3D Internship Experience
By Nikhil Narang
Class of 2012

This semester, Aditi Sinha and I are taking part in an internship opportunity offered through Fairmont’s Engineering Magnet program. Every Monday and Thursday we head to GROWit 3D, a three-dimensional printing company in Lake Forest, where we are learning the basics of additive manufacturing, an advanced method of outputting products. Using this process, engineers can literally grow parts layer-by-layer on industrial sized printers. Through this internship, we are gaining first hand experience with technology that could change the whole process of manufacturing.

At GROWit, our current project is to design a case for a tablet (similar to an iPad) that the engineers use to control all the printers in the facility. We need to focus on the design of the case, making it lightweight and easy to move around while preserving its ability to latch onto every single printer for easier access to the controls on the tablet. In order to design the case, we are also learning the basics of 3D design using Computer-Aided Design, or CAD, programs such as Alibre Design and SolidWorks.

These programs allow us to create a design and modify it whenever we need to, and when it finally comes to printing our design, we can simply press a print button and the 3D printers take care of the rest.

The opportunity has been great, especially because we get to witness the entire process, from developing designs to modifying them to finally creating the product. GROWit has allowed us to expand our breadth of the engineering field through the application of theory that we learn inside the classroom to find real life solutions to problems outside the classroom.