CEDARVILLE, Ohio — For years now, 3-D printing has been instrumental in making products for industries like healthcare and manufacturing.

What You Need To Know

  • Cedarville University Senior Trey Roudebush is the founder of Kerr Street Designs, a 3-D design company

  • Trey has recently partnered with Christian band Rend Collective for his newest lighthouse design

  • The inspiration behind the lighthouse is from the band's song "My Lighthouse"

An Ohio college student and entrepreneur is using his new 3-D design company to help shine a light in a new direction.

Kerr Street Designs Creative Officer Trey Roudebush is the designer of his lighthouse product.

Roudebush said he’s always had a knack for creating and designing things. 

“Most kids would play with Legos and things like that, but I would play with engineers version of Legos where I’d make pneumatic engines and things like that,” said Roudebush. “I saw 3-D printing as the next step in that stage.”

Roudebush was inspired to create the lighthouse after hearing the song “My Lighthouse” by the Christian band called Rend Collective.

“Just learning how to design and I was looking for things to design and I was like, 'hey, I can design a lighthouse.' (I) made a few and went to one of their concerts and my youth leaders decided it would be smart for me to put it on my phone flashlight and have it light up,” he said. 

From there, he began making 3-D prints of lighthouses to make night lights.

Last year, while at a Rend Collective concert he passed them out to fans. That led to him partner with the band to sell them on their website. 

“Over the summer, I was looking for extra sales, revenue and some different sales and income and I reached out to them and they were really eager to get going and really excited about the partnership,” he said. 

This 5-inch lighthouse takes about three hours to make inside the 3-D printer. And there’s a whole lot of work behind the scenes to make it happen, all of which he learned during his studies as an industrial and innovation design major at Cedarville University.

“They help us learn how to do design thinking so whether that be identifying problems in current situations or figuring out how to diagnose them and also how to come up with generating ideas,” he said. 

Kerr Street Designs not only makes these lighthouses but also small-scale prototypes and other designs.

After graduation next spring he said he hopes to work as an industrial designer for a smart home company and continue to expand his business.

“My future plans for Kerr Street Designs is to just continue to get it to grow, release more products and continue outreach,” he said. 

For more information about Kerr Street Designs, click here to visit www.etsy.com/shop/KerrStreetDesign.