EPICS. Engineering Projects in Community Service. This program, developed at Purdue University, is dedicated to helping a specific community service or educational organization. It is based on using new technology developed by members of the service teams. This club at Naz is revolutionary. Not only is it giving students the opportunity to use new technology, but also to help others with special needs.

Junior Viviana Garcia reflected on her experience in the club. “You’re doing something for others and it’s cool because you actually have a chance to see the people you’re helping face to face and you get to talk to them about the biggest struggles in their lives. It’s a great opportunity to help make their life better and easier,” she said.
For their latest projects, EPICS has employed the use of an innovative three dimensional printer. This device was first invented by Charles Hull in the mid 1980’s and has now spread throughout America for various uses. This printer is not just an ordinary one — it has the ability to produce a figure made of various materials.

The process the printer uses is called stereolithography. It uses liquid photopolymer resin to produce the object layer by layer. A laser beam then hits the cross sections of the liquids. It is then exposed to ultraviolet light to solidify the object. Lastly, the pattern is traced, a blade sweeps the cross section, and the layers are joined.
Now, how is this three dimensional printer helping our school’s EPICS club? Well, it is helping EPICS in many ways. It produces parts for the projects that are being developed for persons with disabilities.

Nazareth students are able to use TinkerCAD printer to design pieces for the various projects. Mrs. Titzer assists students with the 3D printer on Fridays. The 3D printer team plans on providing helpful presentations to inspire younger kids to exercise their engineering skills, as well showing them what Nazareth offers as a high school.

Dr. Z, the moderator of EPICS, stated, “The 3-D printer EPICS groups will soon be giving presentations to students from our feeder schools which will hopefully give younger students yet another chance to see why Naz is such a great school and thus possibly giving them another reason to pick Naz as their high school. We are also thinking of ways to develop internships for our students so that they gain some experience with the 3-D printer before entering college.” 3D Printing is an important and growing industry, and the experience at Nazareth is invaluable. It further illustrates to students the innovative ways technology is being used to enhance the lives of others.

One of the projects EPICS is working on is a treat dispenser for people with disabilities. It is designed so that the people can give their dogs a treat with ease. The three dimensional printer assists in creating the parts of the dispenser that members of the club designed. The printing team continues to develop ways to optimize the treat dispenser to best help the people. They are doing this by adding handles fit to size and developing a way to prevent all the treats from falling out at once.

Another part the printer is helping with is the educational games project. The printer will produce the game pieces such as figurines and counters for the board game. The 3D printer is an exciting tool for EPICs, providing new and exciting ways to problem solve and create components for the various projects involved.

The organizer and leash projects are aimed at improving the mobility and independence of the client. These two projects will be helping Olivia and her dog, Hawk. These projects are focused specifically for Olivia, allowing Nazareth students to collaborate with her on a more personal level. There are regular site visits which provide a unique opportunity to observe the service dogs’ training session and to continuously get updated feedback on prototypes.
Colleen Cavanaugh, a junior at Nazareth, comments on her experience with the leash project, “ Epics is the most challenging service project because it is a constant cycle of trial and error but it is the most rewarding because we can witness first hand how our work is making other people’s lives easier.”

EPICS has been a huge success at Naz . Dr. Z says “EPICS creates a unique opportunity for Naz students. It also gets them out into the community when we help our project partners. (Project partners are the organizations or people that we design our projects for) So far, all of our them have been really happy and impressed with the way our students interact with the organizations. Naz students are respectful, friendly, and compassionate, which shows and gives Naz a great reputation” It also gives Naz students yet another way to earn service hours, which is a plus. ” EPICS continues to strive for helping the community, innovating and problem solving while it’s at it.