Kent ISD — Marek Ripmaster created a keychain last year in his engineering class at the Kent Career Tech Center. He turned the project in and had forgotten about it until someone mentioned to him that the Kent ISD Workforce Development team had ordered 900 of them.
“Literally, I didn’t know anything about it until that call,” said Marek, who is a senior at Forest Hills Central High School currently enrolled in the Tech Center’s mechatronics program.
Marek, who plans to attend Michigan Technological University in the fall to study mechanical engineering, said his former engineering instructor Joe Phillips confirmed the order, which has a May deadline to be completed.
“I am pushing the printer hard to complete it,” Phillips said, noting the printer can only produce 28 keychains in a batch. “I start them first thing in the morning so the first batch is done around 10 a.m. Then I start the second patch so that before I go home, the third batch can be completed overnight.”…