Passion for printing
At the crossroads of the arts and STEM, Printed Works aims to teach students how to run a business, from using certain equipment in skill-intensive projects to contacting sponsors and organizations.
The entrepreneurship club was created in December 2017 by former Diamond Bar High School students Ethan Chu, Max Gu and Ashley Pang, with the hopes of utilizing 3D printers to create products.
“The goal of our club is to integrate business, engineering and art, so what we do is we create some products or we take orders from different groups, and then we integrate a design aspect to them,” senior club President Logan Tang said. “And then we sell those products to create like a self-functioning club that uses its revenue to expand its capabilities.”
Printed Works creates various products, including customized clothing and banners and 3D-printed models. The club members also do graphic design and laser engraving.
In the past, the club worked with the Children’s Museum at La Habra to create a display related to Mexican culture by 3D-printing and painting food items such as enchiladas, tacos and burritos. Printed Works also made the DBHS class of 2022 T-shirts. One of their current projects is the robot InMoov, which is 3D-printed and contains hardware that has artificial intelligence.
“The robot has a large number of capabilities…it has like articulated limbs, it has cameras, it has speakers, so it could listen to words and then have a conversation, or it could make gestures, move its arms; it can record what it sees,” Tang said.
The club’s equipment is not only limited to 3D printers. Club members use direct-to-garment printers and screen printers to produce customized clothes. To print banners and stickers, they utilize banner printers and plotters. Some of the equipment are from the wood shop and architecture design classes, while other 3D printers and banner printers were provided by Joe Bloomfield, CEO of GlowZone, Inc. and Spyder 3D, who serves as an off-site sponsor for the group.
The adviser for Printed Works is An Tran, who teaches Computer Aided Drafting and Design and Advance Engineering Design/Architectural Design at DBHS.
The club has three-hour meetings two to three times a week. Printed Works has three sections: business, art and engineering. During the meetings, the club members from all three sections work together to make specific products or projects to complete orders they received.
According to junior Vice President Caitlin Lee, Printed Works has a wide clientele, which includes clubs, teams and individuals, that can order personalized clothing and other products from the club. The business section communicates with clients to find out what kind of products they want, the art section designs the products and the engineering section prints the products if needed.
Once the club members sell the products that they have made, the money earned is used to pay for the club’s equipment. Last year, the club produced $15,000 in revenue.
Tang hopes to increase club membership from the current 16 members to possibly 30 or 40 people, which would help the club complete more orders and tackle different projects.
“The goal is pretty much just to keep doing what we do and maybe eventually on a larger scale,” Lee said. “And then there’s also kind of the concept of Printed Works; we want that in other school districts, too.”
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