Tuesday, October 07, 2014YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- The Advanced Methods in Innovation program will relocate some of its equipment from Choffin Career & Technical Center to space it will lease in the Youngstown Business Incubator’s Semple Building.
The nonprofit entity, which offers K-12 STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) programming at Choffin, will move its advanced manufacturing/rapid prototyping lab to first-floor space in Semple, says Julie Michael Smith, executive vice president with Applied Systems & Technology Transfer LLC.
Advanced Methods in Innovation licenses AST2’s InventorCloud program and curriculum to the participating schools. AST2 also provides hardware and software.
The program will keep its 3-D printer and manufacturing operation at Choffin. The vocational school had been “a very accommodating location” for several years but has some limitations, chiefly in terms of access in the evenings, on weekends and during the summer months, Smith said. “We also would like to have a facility that would be a bit more accommodating to the public,” she added.
One of the pieces of equipment being relocated, an Epilog 29 laser cutter, which Smith described as a “typical” piece of shop class equipment, will require a 4-inch vent to be installed in the top right corner of the Semple Building.
The laser cutter, used to cut paper and wood and engrave designs on aluminum, emits “very nominal smoke,” Smith today told members of Youngstown’s Design Review Committee. She sought and received permission from the committee to replace a small upper window with a metal panel to accommodate the vent.
“I think it’s pretty nondescript,” remarked Chuck Shasho, deputy director of public works for the city, who sits on the committee.
Smith said she wasn’t sure she needed approval for the work “but better to be safe that sorry,” she remarked.
The new space will have the laser cutter, a mill, a router, 3-D printers, zSpace 3-D holographic terminals and design stations. “The space will, of course, be used to support our schools,” Smith said. The program serves 55 schools in three states.
The long-term goal is to use the space for a “fab lab” along the lines of the one at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Columbus’ Idea Foundry, and make it available to the public, she continued. “That dovetails in nicely with what’s going on at America Makes,” she said. She would also like to add a digital sewing machine and vinyl cutter to the space.
“We have the technology that will allow people to virtually access [the lab] so you, from your home at midnight, if you decide to send a file over for 3-D printing you will have that capability,” Smith said.
In addition to providing support for schools, Smith hopes to have field trips in the space and is looking at a summer camp next year for students in grades 5-8.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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