Case Study: Brooklyn Technical High School turns students into makers with MakerBot

Brooklyn Technical High School - Customer Case Study

Brooklyn Technical High School, the nation’s largest STEM-focused high school, needed to give its 5,500 students more regular, hands-on opportunities in engineering and manufacturing so classroom learning could be applied to real making. To meet that challenge the school adopted desktop 3D printing from MakerBot, initially acquiring MakerBot Replicator 2 printers and later participating in the MakerBot Academy educational initiative.

MakerBot supplied an expanding fleet of printers—six Replicator 2s in 2012, four more through MakerBot Academy and DonorsChoose, and today Brooklyn Tech has 17 MakerBot Replicators—integrating MakerBot MakerWare and 3D printing into courses and extracurriculars. The result: all 1,400 freshmen now design in CAD and print projects, seniors can produce parts in 45 minutes on a MakerBot versus four to five days on CNC equipment, and the school reports broader student engagement, easier supervision, and faster iteration thanks to MakerBot’s accessible 3D-printing tools.

Brooklyn Technical High School

Randy Asher

Principal