Dylan Banera, 17, CNC Machining major and president of the 3D Printing Club, has taken the next step in his engineering career: manufacturing his own self-constructed bikes at De Anza.

Transcript:

0:00

[Music]

0:04

[Dylan Banera] My name’s Dylan Banera. I’m 17 years old. I do CNC machining at De Anza. I’m the president of the 3D Printing Club. I’ve been working on this bike project for the past six months, and it’s all about 3D printed bikes.

0:17

So I wanted to make a bike frame for a pretty long time. My interest in bikes has been with me since I was really young. I started with BMXing and Dirt Jumping, and then when COVID happened, it just boosted my love for bikes a little bit more because that was the only thing to do. I got a group of friends together and we went BM Xing every single day. And because I’m a maker and I’m a tinkerer, I wanted to make a bike frame and I thought there was no better opportunity than this year at Sea Otter. 

0:43

So Sea Otter is the biggest bike trade show in North America. All the bike companies from around the world, they go to that trade show and it’s held every single year at Laguna Seca. There’s just a bunch of races. It’s a big party kind of, and you just go around to different booths and you talk to different people and race bikes. 

1:01

[Mika Takatsu Banera] My first memory of him being creative and like to hands on project is Legos. When he was three and a half, it was impossible to have him sit still, but once you give him a Lego set, he could sit there until he completed the whole set. 

1:21

[Dylan Banera] Then I’d take apart sets and I’d put the sets back together, but in my own way– like I’d think about just what else could this be? And then I started to watch a lot of videos on 3D printing, and then I begged my dad to buy the cheapest 3D printer that he could find. So I got it from my 10th birthday, and ever since then I never put down a 3D printer. Never stopped CADing and my skills have only grown since then. 

1:44

[Mike Appio] His definite passion through 3D printing carried over into the bicycle area, which allowed him to create some very unique individual parts. The amount of students that have the passion and the drive at that age to start their own business, not afraid to go into areas that they’d never been before. You don’t get a lot of those. Be honest with you. You may get three, four a year in different areas, but I would say his passion this year is probably more than any student we have that would be in our full program.

2:14

[Max Gilleland] My first impression of Dylan was pretty positive. He seemed very dynamic and forward thinking and very positive about things, and very proactive about everything he engaged in. 

2:26

[Mika Takatsu Banera] He purchased his own car with his own money he made during the summer break. There are many times I said “It’s not worth your time– just go to pay for it, and then just drive it.” But he insist to fix the problems the car has. And it doesn’t matter how long it take, he pursued to fix his car.

2:52

[Max Gilleland] He is a nonstop machine going 24/7 with lots of energy and always curious about everything. Highly motivated, naturally and always willing to learn and try new things, and very flexible about how he approaches different sort of problems and issues. 

3:10

[Mike Appio] So whatever class he’s in, even though he is doing the coursework, he’s always looking at, talking about, asking questions of that extracurricular outside work to be better to get him to the next step. 

3:22

[Dylan Banera] So I try to do as much as I can myself. Obviously, for things like CNC machining, it’s kind of expensive to buy the machines, so I do work with some people that I know to help me out with some machining. And then for 3D, printing the stuff, I do that all myself. We have a beautiful lab at De Anza that has a lot of machines that I’m able to use.

3:42

[Max Gilleland] As far as Dylan and his project and what’s going on here at De Anza College– we have a very unique situation happening here. I think that if you looked around at the country, you’d see very few facilities like this. We’ve been very fortunate to have some backing from the state in our National Science Foundation grant, and I hope that Dylan’s projects and his enthusiasm for embracing this sort of advanced manufacturing process will lead others to realize the possibilities and encourage them to build that next rocket ship to Mars. 

4:18

[Music]

4:21

[Dylan Banera] The biggest thing that I think these two bike frames have taught me is just taking the first step to make a frame. The thing I struggled with the most, and because I thought about making a frame for a long time and never did was because I just never took that first step. I never took the initiative. 

4:35

[Mike Appio] Take advantage of all the situations you have that are beyond class: Clubs– they have a 3D printing club–, the extra labs, all the extra thing that’s available to you where you have mentors to help you through this. So as you’re going through, you’re using your extra time. Take advantage of all the time and all the people here to help you out to be the best you can be. 

4:54

[Mika Takatsu Banera] I think he knows now, right now, never give up. So it doesn’t matter how many failures you have during your process, but never give up. 

5:04

[Dylan Banera] And even if you fail, just do it. Just do it to learn. Do it for the experience, do it. Just try. And if it fails, then you can always go back to doing whatever you were doing. But I think the biggest thing for me is you just need to try at least once.