A local Covington pre-teen may have saved the city a couple thousand dollars by simply using a 3D printer.

Nathanael Junkin saved up and bought himself a 3D printer not too long ago. His dad, Ross Junkin, operations and maintenance manager for the city of Covington, asked Nathanael if he could help the city out by using his 3D printer.

According to Ross, there have been multiple instances where people have pried open the locked gates at Covington Community Park, causing part of the gate to break.

“Later last year, we had two instances where we think somebody was locked into the park after hours — it’s posted, you know gate closes at such and such — and they stayed late, gate closed. There’s a phone number to call to help us help them get out. Sometimes people will take matters into their own hands and force the gate open and that’s what we think happened on more than one occasion,” Ross said.

The piece that opens and closes the gate automatically snapped off. Ross said they only needed one little screw-type piece to fix it, but he said the manufacturer said that piece was not available by itself.

So in order to fix the gate, the city would spend about $1,000 each time.

To avoid unnecessary costs, Ross asked Nathanael if he could make something on his band new 3D printer.

“I asked my son — because he had just purchased his 3D printer, which he had beens saving months for — I said, ‘Hey, what do you think? I got this problem at work do you think you could help us fix this?’” Ross said.

Nathanael got to work right away and recreated the missing piece in very little time.

To make the piece work, Nathanael said he had to go through a series of different prototypes that he made on a computer program that connects with the 3D printer.

“So there were about 16 different samples so I selected one that had four screws and four threads on it. Then I deleted all the other ones that I used,” he explained. “It was pretty hard at first. I had to print 23 of these before I could get it right. At first they either didn’t fit at all, too tight, too loose. Then I finally found this one (referring to the prototype that worked), which fit just about right.”

He said he had the old (broken) piece to go off of, which helped a little bit. He said the hardest part was getting the threads that screw onto the gate just right.

It only took Nathanael two weeks to complete the new piece.

Nathanael said the printer takes about six hours total to print the entire piece, which is a small price to pay in comparison to the $1,000 that was being spent before. Ross said the material to make the piece in the printer only cost about $2.50.

“It’s as easy as printing out pieces of paper,” Ross said

Well, easy for Nathanael.

“Yeah, it’s way over my head this stuff. He showed it to me and I said, ‘Wow, that’s awesome.’ I can’t help you, you’re going to have to do it yourself,” Ross explained.

Nathanael said he has the file for the right piece saved, so if the city ever needs another piece he can start to make a new one right away.

Ross said he has already printed two so there’s now a back up.