South Kitsap High School’s Career and Technical Education program recently became the proud recipient of an exciting new MakerBot 3-D plastic printer in their CAD Lab classroom.

The Leidos Corp., located in Lynnwood, and headquartered in Reston, Virg., donated the machine. The donation was facilitated by David Ray, a Leidos employee and member of the Principal Advisory Board for the Engineering and Manufacturing Advisory Group at SKHS.

“With this donation, our Engineering and Architectural students will be able to explore and gain a much better understanding of their design software, inter-relations of complex assemblies, and physical attributes of their project designs,” said Myrl Williamson, Computer Aided Engineering and Architecture programs instructor. “Working with the 3-D printer will allow the students’ designs to ‘come alive.’”

Williamson said students can physically see and feel their projects and constructed assemblies first-hand, while working together as design teams would interact in a real world setting.

“The students focus on determining a need, designing a solution and solving the problem,” he said.