It’s a 3D world, and she likes it

Kaia Luik, a fifth grader at River Oaks Elementary, uses her dream present, a 3D printer, to make custom items to sell for charity.

When I saw a 3D printer at The Kinkaid School open house last year I was sure that it was the most amazing thing on Earth. I’d always loved to create things and make businesses, so this seemed like the perfect machine for me. “Out of the question” was my parents’ reply.

This year, we saw the 3D printer again, and my parents finally agreed to research it. Turns out some of the printers weren’t that expensive at all, but with all of them there were risks. The items I made could come out warped or cracked, or just become piles of string. Still, I tried out the free design software, Tinkercad. It was good, easy enough. I wanted a 3D printer for my birthday, Christmas and Hanukkah gifts combined, even if it only made dinky items and piles of string. We joked that I could just keep using the name of my string-bracelet business, Kaia’s Strings.

The day before my birthday I learned that my parents had gotten it, the Printrbot Simple. I was extremely excited but nervous because I didn’t know if it would work. After my birthday my mom and I set it up. We encountered a few problems, actually a lot of problems, but we managed to fix them pretty well. I tried it out. The first creations went perfect (almost), as long as we picked good designs from Thingiverse, a website where people can post their 3D creations. I sold some items to kids in my school, and soon decided that selling things to help animals and other causes would be a pretty good idea too. I already knew how to make a website, so I made one for my business, printingthefuture.biz. I’m now starting to design items on my own.

I plan to use the money I get from custom items to modify my printer and buy more filament, which is very expensive, while I design special items for my causes. I keep discovering and thinking of more and more uses for this awesome machine, and I’m looking forward to building a greater and greater business.

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