Investing in the Future

Three years ago, student interest in the machining program at Lake Superior Community College (LSC) in Duluth, MN, had dwindled to the point where only six students had enrolled for the fall semester. School officials declared the program would end. Those who were currently enrolled could continue on to get their two-year associate’s degree, but the program would not take on any additional students.

This decision, however, did not sit well with local manufacturers, particularly a rapidly growing northern Minnesota aerospace industry that relies on the school to supply them with qualified new employees and train existing workers in advanced technologies. So the program’s Advisory Board and industry partners worked with LSC staff to develop a proposal for an entirely new program.
It called for scrapping outdated manual manufacturing equipment and investing about a million dollars in advanced milling, Swiss turning, wire EDM, a CMM, computers and related CAD/CAM and measurement software. One of the most visible additions to the new manufacturing lab is a 12ft robot arm for automated loading and unloading of this equipment. To demonstrate their sincerity, industry partners agreed to contribute about 20% of the cost. And so, the new Integrated Manufacturing Program was born.

Teamwork Rules

According to Instructor Mike Koppy, students were immediately enthusiastic about the new curriculum that emphasized advanced technology and teamwork. He said, “It used to be that our students would come in and hop on a machine and never talk to another student. If you were communicating with other students, you probably weren’t doing your work. Now we start them off working as teams in the first semester, so when they get out in industry they will be more adept at communicating with fellow workers.”
To foster teamwork, the program seeks to break down walls between traditional manufacturing disciplines. While students specialize in Design, CNC Machining or Welding, every student attends classes together during the first semester to get an overview of all the inter-related disciplines that are woven together to create modern manufacturing organization.
In subsequent semesters, the projects they are assigned will require them to interact with diverse systems and students in the other areas. For example, students studying design using Solid Works CAD software will then have to use Mastercam CAM software to create their own toolpaths and manufacture their parts on the CNC manufacturing equipment. (
Students also have ample opportunity to collaborate with “customers” from the local manufacturing community who provide difficult parts for them to work on. Koppy said, “It’s always some sort of curve ball. We rarely do the same thing twice. I can’t really give them a pre-set program because we don’t have one. Recently we were asked to make 100 parts for an individual. So the students had to figure out how we were going to make it, how to hold it, what tooling would be best, and how to approach the manufacturing task within the parameters of the machines we had available.”

Bad Robots
 
All second semester participants in the program also take a course together, Concepts II, in which teams of students ultimately build Battlebots— custom-designed, scale-model, remote control combat robots. This activity allows the students to collectively employ all of the skills they have learned to date. Local industry partners judge the students’ designs and this accounts for 2/3 of each student’s grade for the course.
At the end of the semester when the teams compete to see which will be the last Battlebot standing, the event draws the avid attention not only of other LSC students but also the surrounding community. It turns out that the Battlebots program has been one of the main reasons why LSC’s Integrated Manufacturing Program is back on the radar screen of local area senior and junior high school students.
“We get lots of free publicity,” said Koppy. The local papers and TV stations cover it 100%.  There is something about robots that makes it really sexy for media pick up. Now the message is getting out to younger students. We’ve started a robotics league for high school students that meets in the evening. We fund the materials they need to build their Battlebots and they work in teams. They can also compete in our spring competition or they can go to other competitions in the area if they want. We get high school students interested in robotics and they see how we go about machining this stuff and they get interested in our manufacturing programs.”

Like Speed Dating

Students who become interested in manufacturing education can attend workshops at LSC where they get to see what it’s all about by rotating around 13 stations representing different types of manufacturing operations. Most stations include CNC machines and Mastercam where the visitors are asked to complete a specific task in five to seven minutes. It’s kind of like speed dating. At the end of the date, the machine makes a part that the visitor has worked on.
High school students are not the only ones who are getting an advanced look at LSC’s approach to manufacturing education. This summer, Koppy ran a one-week “Manufacturing Camp” for junior high schools students. They don’t manufacture any parts but they do get to design and build their own task robot using a gear kit.
Since prospective students are coming to him, Koppy will not be going on recruiting missions to high schools— something he used to do about 16 times a year. The new outreach programs are working better. Enrollment has reached optimal levels, a new entry level section has been added and the program has hired a new instructor. That is pretty impressive for a program that was on the verge of extinction just a few years ago.

Mirroring Aerospace Operations

To give students a feel for what it’s like to work at a nearby aerospace plant, LSC uses its CNC horizontal machining center to automatically manufacture 13 parts that will be ultimately assembled into a single component. The entire setup consists of two pallets, each with four vises, and each clamping one or two work pieces.
LSC instructor Mike Koppy said, “The students create the NC program in Mastercam and set it up. Then we press ‘cycle start’ and the horizontal CNC makes all 13 different pieces just like our aerospace industry partner does. So our students have learned how to tie all these sub-programs together into one gigantic program.
“But that is just the beginning. Just because a student can write a CNC program and the part comes out right doesn’t mean the program is an efficient one that we would want to keep. So we teach them how to go back in and keep tweaking the program to make it better. That is a very valuable skill.”
Koppy said his students are learning to use other advanced toolpaths that his aerospace industry partners are beginning to use to further improve manufacturing efficiencies. For example, students are learning to use Mastercam Plunge Roughing toolpaths to more efficiently remove large volumes of material from parts while reducing the strain on the machines’ tools, spindles and servomotors.
Koppy believes the ability of LSC to focus in on manufacturing skills relevant to aerospace has been one of the reasons these business partners have chosen to locate more of their manufacturing operations in northern Minnesota.