SANDPOINT — Five Sandpoint High School welding students are getting experiece with professional equipment outside of the classroom due to a partnership between the school, MakerPoint Studios and the Kiwanis Club of Sandpoint. 

The three organizations partnered to allow the students to use the equipment at MakerPoint, specifically the CNC plasma table, to give them the experience above and beyond their high school lab. To get the pilot program off the ground, Kiwanis funded four MakerPoint sessions for SHS welding instructor Jake Stark's five capstone students.

"We wanted to connect the high school to the community, and this is just another way we are trying to do that," said Alex Gray, career-technical educator at SHS.

Nate Rench, vice president and scholarship chair for Kiwanis, said the club is trying to focus on giving more to vocational education with local high school students. After learning about MakerPoint, they saw it as a "really cool" opportunity to help out a newer organization in the community, as well as give the students vocational experience.

"It just seemed like the perfect fit for us, and it is pretty cool watching them do what they do," Rench said, adding that, if all goes well in the pilot, the club hopes to support the program more in the future.

Gray said each of the five students are looking into careers in the machining, welding and manufacturing world, so it gives them "real world" experience in equipment SHS does not have. It also allows them to work with experts in the community, and determine if it is a field they indeed want to pursue or not.

"It makes it so they are college and career ready, by having these experiences," Gray said.

Mike Martz, SHS instructor with machine shop experience, is leading the students through their CNC project at MakerPoint. With the help of MakerPoint members Henry Edwards and Tom Sykes, the students have been creating cutout metal signs for the local 4H program.

The Kiwanis Club will benefit from the students' experience as well, as the teens are designing and cutting a sign for the entrance of the club's Camp Stidwell. SHS seniors Dylan Chapman and Zayne Casey were working on the sign at MakerPoint on Friday, and Chapman said they had the design completed, which took them about an hour to come up with, and then another hour or so on the computer. After making necessary revisions to their original design, Casey said it was ready to be cut out. The other three SHS seniors participating in the pilot are Tanner Kohal, Liam Loper and Alex Wolff.

Edwards said the teens have been doing well in the program, and are never more than one step away from solving any problem they might have.

"They pick up the software really quickly and they already know how to use plasma cutters, so half of this machine is already second nature," Edwards said. "They are quick learners. It has been a lot of fun."

MakerPoint Studios is a membership-based makerspace with the latest fabrication and build technologies. Membership is open to the public and businesses at varying levels of access. 

MakerPoint houses several pieces of equipment for use, including professional woodshop and metal fabrication tools, electronics fabrication, silk screen printing, an industrial sewing machine, advanced tools such as the CNC plasma table, laser engravers and more.

Mary Malone can be reached by email at mmalone@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow her on Twitter @MaryDailyBee.