With the installation of the schools new fabrication lab, students are getting the full use of it. Todd Kapsner teaches the Industrial Tech classes and is the advisory of the Fab Lab.

Assistant Principal Aaron Drevlow, came to the students during the beginning of the year and presented them with the idea of making a new ID holder. He was trying to solve the problem of the plastic breaking where the lanyards or clips are hooked on to the lanyard.

“Mine have broken in the past,” Drevlow said to the Pioneer Press. “I prefer to carry my keys on my lanyard also, but I never had an elegant way to do it. When you wear a suit every day, you want one that is a little bit more fashion-conscious.”

They used the Fab Lab’s 3D printed to make their design come to life. The 3D printer uses plastic to print out students designs that they created on the computer. Cory Spawn and Brent Barclay along with the help of some others went to work on the design.

“We worked on the project for about two thirds of first semester,” said junior Brent Barclay.

Their design, which looks like an upside-down U, glues to the badge and has a spot for a lanyard to screw in on both sides so that it will lie flat.

“The lanyard piece of the badge holder is a standard lanyard that has the clip part cut off, then the two ends are each glued into their own slot so that as a safety feature the badge would rip off the lanyard,” explained Barclay.

Employees of C.G. Hill and Sons, a Mounds View manufacturing business, are helping the teens with the final product, which will be made out of brushed aluminum.

“Their programmer looked at their prototypes and made some changes for the machining part of it,” Kapsner told the Pioneer Press. “It was going to be extremely difficult to machine it the way they had it, so they moved the ‘fins’ out to the edge. They’re learning how to go from design to actually making it.”

The students are looking really at a hopeful future with their design and are hoping to maybe expand their design outside of Stillwater.

“This could be marketed if you found the right market, do I see this happening, right now no. But in the future it could happen,” said Barclay.

They are still working on the final touches of their design but they are hoping to get their finished product done soon.