EDvolution Center wins laser cutter in national competition

Lasers are not exactly common on the Southeast campus. Winning one is even more uncommon. But that is what happened in December when Full Spectrum Laser in Las Vegas awarded a Muse Hobby Laser Cutter to the Smith Family Makerspace in the EDvolution Center to help cut, burn and engrave manipulatives for Southeast teacher candidates.

Heath Hase, the center’s coordinator, said the company asked for video submissions in its nationwide contest explaining why an organization should win the laser cutter.

“The actual deadline of when we had to submit the video was the very next day,” Hase said. “So, one of our EDvolution Specialists here in the EDvolution Center, Alan and myself, put together a video in about three hours.”

About a week after the deadline, Full Spectrum Laser announced the winner via a live Facebook video stream.

The new laser cutter in action t the EDvolution Center. Photo by Jen Odden

“They didn’t go into great details as to why we won because we had to tell them during our video submission as to how we would use it,” Hase said. “So we feel, because we did a great job of explaining how it will be useful here in the EDvolution Center, that is the reason why we were chosen.”

The laser cutter is only operated by either Hase or an EDvolution Center specialist, but he said Southeast teacher candidates and regional educators are welcome to use the laser cutter to develop products for the classroom.

“We print out and design a lot of manipulatives for classroom work,” Hase said. “So we have teacher candidates who want to have fraction blocks or angles or something like that printed or created for their classroom, and we’re able to do that much faster on the laser cutter.”

Alan DeYong, an EDvolution specialist operates the laser cutter to produce materials for teachers to use in the classroom. DeYong said the laser cutter has supporting equipment such as a ventilation and cooling system. It also uses mirrors, which the laser is bounced off of, to cut or engrave materials.

“The laser itself within the machine does get very hot, and that’s why water cooling is required,” Deyong said. “The machine itself makes sure that you, as the user, would never get close to anything that’s hot, while it’s hot, so it’s completely safe to be around.”

“It’s a very popular item, in terms of people walk in and they’re like ‘Wow you have a laser,’” Hase said.

Because the laser cutter is relatively new to the center, only a few teacher candidates have used the laser cutter to print out manipulatives for the classroom.

“We anticipate that popularity growing once we actually start marketing it to our students as well as regional educators,” Hase said.