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Maker Faire Bay Area 2012 has been an incredible event, not just for the 100,000 or so people who came through here — still waiting for the official figures! — but also for the Makers. It’s been a weekend full of weirdness, magic, and…drama!

Here’s the scene: a middle school boy goes to a fantastic summer day camp, Galileo Learning, in Hillsborough, CA. He builds a great go-kart as his final project. But when Galileo transports the go-kart to Maker Faire, the steering wheel is dangling by a single bolt. Missing a nut!

The boy in our story, Adam, is a maker. He saw this problem and went out to fix it. When you’re at Maker Faire, you can probably find someone with the right size nut, right? Surely Tech Shop has one on hand.

Nope! Adam walked around the floor looking for a solution, and then… OH YEAH!

You can make the things you need! Over at the Tinkercad booth, Adam discovered that company’s incredible web-based design platform, and worked with the brilliant Henrik to draw out the right part. And since Tinkercad had a MakerBot right there on the table, he was able to make it on site in a matter of minutes. Shino writes over at the Tinkercad blog that the whole process took 45 minutes, beginning to end. Whoa.

Adam watches as The Replicator makes a part for his go-kart

Installing the nut, designed on Tinkercad

Thanks to the cooperation of friendly people in the Faire, Adam was able to slap the new part onto his go-kart and show his finished product how it was meant to be seen. As soon as we heard the story, we zoomed over to find him and decked him out with a MakerBot t-shirt and Awesome Award.

This is one rad kid, and I was so happy to hear his story, and he was happy to talk about it. Any teachers or parents out there wondering if kids really understand the power of being able to make things for themselves on a MakerBot, here’s a great example to remember.

Thanks for making our Maker Faire, Adam! And thank you to our great friends at Tinkercad for empowering kids the way they do.