The Smartforce Student Summit proved to be more successful than ever. During IMTS 2014, students, educators, administrators and parent chaperones from more than 450 schools and dozens of scout troops attended. The schools came primarily from the Chicagoland area, with heavy participation from the Great Lakes states and students who attend community college or engineering school from a total of 34 states, double the number of states represented at IMTS 2012 participated in IMTS via the student summit as well.

With more than 50 hands-on exhibits, the Student Summit was able to provide a fun and interactive environment to introduce educators, students and parents to exciting innovations in manufacturing technology and dynamic careers in the industry.

Students had the opportunity to see how much fun STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) based learning can be in the Make It! area. There, students were able to try out new technologies and compete to see who could design and create the most effective 3D-printed wind turbine, courtesy of Rippl3D. Once through the Student Summit experience, students were invited to visit the thousands of IMTS exhibits.