CLAREMONT — It may have been summer, but in early July the Sugar River Technical Center was nearly as busy as any school day.
Middle school students had their pick of a one-week summer camp, from culinary arts to building construction, safe babysitting and manufacturing.
Nine youngsters signed up for the manufacturing camp to learn about everything from 3D printing and drones, to CNC machinery and the basics of mechanical engineering.
Caleb Milbourn, a Stevens High School biology and physical sciences teacher, joined Scott Pope, who taught engineering and machining at the tech center, as camp instructors.
“It is about exposing them to new ideas,” said Milbourn, as several students worked on building mousetrap cars. “An extra sidebar may be to get them to an engineering mindset, but it is really about having them try different things. You won’t know if you like something until you try it.”
Ezra Caple, 12, of Claremont, was focused on constructing his mousetrap car. He inserted small wooden dowels that serve as axles for the wheels, in addition to connectecting plastic gears.
“I really like engineering and I think this class will give me an early start to learn the basics of how things work,” said Ezra, whose favorite activity after two days was working on the computer software to build an object using a 3D printer. For his car, Ezra was modifying the basic construction to include interlocking a few different sized plastic gears to improve performance.
“I think I can make it go as far as my mind pleases,” Ezra said.
More than 350 summer manufacturing camps are run each year in 29 states, with most sponsored by the trade group the Fabricators and Manufacturers Association, according to the Elgin, Ill., based organization. Many other camps are independent and run by local school districts, such as the one at the tech center.
Sugar River center ran a manufacturing camp three or four years ago and decided to bring it back this year, Pope said.
“We came up with some activities to show them science, technology, engineering and manufacturing,” Pope said.
On the camp’s second day, Pope was teaching four students how to load material into a 3D printer. The goal was to have each student make a small nameplate and later add wording, such as their name.
Pope was instructing them on how to load a large spool of PLA (polyactic acid) material onto the back of a 3D printer then feed into the extruder. PLA is like plastic filament and once in the extruder, it is pulled into the machine for production.
“Now let’s see if this works,” Pope says and the PLA slowly comes out into production.
The mousetrap cars were built with the help of five pages of instruction with diagrams, not unlike what a parent faces putting a toy together on late Christmas eve.
Constructing a mousetrap car presented the campers with a number of challenges, the instructors said.
While Milbourn was on hand to help, each student worked independently as they tried to assemble the gears so they were in sync and provided faster acceleration.
The cars — which were about a foot long — had a basic design, with the trap mounted on a plastic chassis in the back between the rear wheels. To move the car forward, campers wrapped string around dowels inserted into one of the gears: Turning the rear wheels, wrapped the string around the dowel and slowly brought back a long wooden dowel, or lever, that was attached to the traps’ spring loaded mechanism. When campers completely pulled the mechanism back, the lever remained in place until the car was on the cement floor. Then they released it to send the car rolling forward as the string unwound. Several students tested their cars on the cement floor in the machine tool room, watching them travel up to 15 or 20 feet.
Being able to spend a week making things interested Khaleesi Sweetser, 10, of Claremont, who said her goal is to become an engineer.
“I want to invent things and make my own inventions” Khaleesi said as she used a tool to cut dowels to insert in the gears. “Yesterday I made four different types of paper airplanes. They fly just not really well.”
Keihin McClay, 13, of Claremont, was focused on improving his car’s speed and distance using different size gears. He enrolled in the camp because 3D printing and coding interested him, but for now he was learning about the mechanics of gearing.
“I am making the large gear so it connects with this small one and makes the car go farther and faster,” Keihin said.
