David Summerlin, a 2025 graduate, is putting his education to work as an engineer for Build Additive, a Pike County startup that is looking to revolutionize residential construction with large-scale concrete 3D printing technology.
Summerlin graduated from TROY with a degree in Electronics Engineering and a minor in Additive Manufacturing. TROY’s engineering program, which was only a couple of years old when Summerlin enrolled, offered him access to faculty and research opportunities typically unavailable to undergraduates.
“I liked how Troy was a smaller school,” Summerlin said. “I felt like it was going to provide more opportunities as opposed to going to a school in a program that had thousands of students.”
Summerlin’s connection to 3D printing started before college. His father owns a 3D printing company in Dothan, and through industry connections, Summerlin met Frank Marquette while still in high school. Marquette, who is one of the co-founders of Build Additive, launched the additive manufacturing program when he taught at TROY.
“I had gotten to come up here and see the facilities and meet Mr. Marquette,” Summerlin said. “That’s when I knew that I wanted to have the 3D printing minor as well.”
At TROY, Summerlin worked closely with Dr. Raj K. Vinnakota in the electronics engineering program and began conducting research in his first semester, a rare opportunity for a freshman.
“The big advantage to doing the engineering program with Dr. Vinnakota is you get a very personalized learning experience,” he said. “If there was anything I ever wanted to learn that was above and beyond or outside the scope of any given class, Dr. V would always help us explore that.”
That early research experience led to a published paper on flexible electronics by his senior year.
The idea for Build Additive began during after-hours sessions in TROY’s Idea Bank lab. Summerlin and Marquette, along with other students, started experimenting with concrete 3D printing technology. They built prototypes and refined the concept, eventually turning their academic project into a viable business.
“Frank Marquette is my former professor, and we used to work together after hours, mixing and printing in the Idea Bank lab,” he said. “We stayed in touch, started the company shortly, built the first machine in his garage, and it’s been all uphill from there.”
Today, Summerlin’s work at Build Additive is varied. The startup designs and builds everything in-house, from pumps and motion systems to firmware and slicing software.
“If there’s one thing we do every day, it’s solve problems,” he said. “In any given day, I could be cracking bags and mixing concrete or writing code or screwing two bits of metal together and seeing how it all works out. And most days it’s a little bit of all of that.”
Build Additive initially focused on selling equipment to tier-one research institutions like MIT. The company is now pivoting toward residential construction, with Summerlin’s home serving as the proof of concept.
“We’re going to print my house here in Troy, and it’ll be the first 3D-printed home here in Alabama,” he said.
For students interested in following a similar path, Summerlin’s advice is simple: start now and don’t fear failure.
“The best thing you can do is just start and start researching, start figuring out, make your own little projects,” he said. “You want to fail as many times as possible because that gets you closer to success. The hardest part of doing anything is always just starting, so you’ve got to just go jump headfirst into it. And nine out of 10 times it ends up being easier than you thought.”
