Many students pursue different endeavors, participating in activities like sports to theatre to engineering. Junior Victor Andrei, who is currently on the Gunn Robotics Team (GRT), likes to use his hands to make creations. He and junior Chase Miner have been working on making an electric skateboard that will be finished in the coming months.

His idea stemmed from seeing many people ride electric skate-boards. “I saw people riding around the electric skateboards and I thought, ‘It would be cool if I had one of those,’” he said. Seeing how expensive they were online, Andrei decided to try one on his own.

Andrei’s skateboard is made of different materials like aluminum, fiber, glass and wood. For him, speed and price are two of the most unique factors that the skateboard has. “So my electric skateboard goes pretty fast at 30 miles per hour and has a range of 16 miles,” he said. “It isn’t super expensive compared to 800 bucks on the market. I think that it is pretty reasonable.”

Andrei equates much of his success to his experiences on GRT. “A lot of skills that I used making the skateboard like machining metal and heavy machinery that I learned from GRT was really useful for making this,” he said. “I would suggest to anybody at Gunn who’s interested in anything robotics or business-wise to join GRT, because it has really good opportunities.” The final product of his skateboard is something that he is most looking forward to. “I think seeing the final product and all the work that you put into it, like seeing the whole thing coming together and the product, is really cool,” Andrei said.

Andrei plans on continuing do-it-yourself inventions like this in the future and hopefully in college.