College welding. Among manufacturing programs at the college: Numerical machine tooling, computer assisted designing and drafting, computer engineering and welding.
Mayor, industry leaders: “Nice going”
WINONA, Minn. – The underdog Minnesota State Southeast team that won the national MFG Advanced Manufacturing Championship was honored at a campus ceremony. Mayor Scott Sherman extended his congratulations. So did executives of sponsoring local manufacturers: Mike Messenger of Rushford Manufacturing and Willie Lubahn of Fastenal. The championship was especially sweet for the Southeast team, which was new to the competition and an underdog among the four finalist teams, all of which had had advanced to the nationals through regional contests. The task at nationals, unannounced in advance, was to fabricate metal parts for a total hip replacement and weld a pressure vessel, in this case a small version of an autoclave necessary to sterilize medical equipment. The students were given raw materials, diagrams and specifications. Then it was up to them. They had 20 hours over three days. Teams needed to demonstrate digital design and manual machining, programming, welding, and metrology skills, as well as team work, problem solving, time management, and cost tracking.
Foursome in team gear. Bradley Bishop, of Ettrick, Wis.; Ellery Kiesel, of Winona; Ivey Wadman Vehrenkamp ,of Ettrick; and Austyn Warren, of Dakota.
New machine tool
The prize money, $100,00, will be shared 50-50 between the students and the college. The college plans to put its $50,000 toward a 5-axis machine for its lab.
Why underdogs?
The team from Southeast entered the nationals as underdogs. Why? For starters, the competition called for skills using what’s called aa 5-axis computer numerical control machine, but the college doesn’t have one. Team advisor Rick Hengel, was able to locate a 5-axis machine at Rushford Manufacturing. The company assigned employees to coach the students on the equipment. Then there was luck. At the contest, in South Carolina, the team learned that tungsten-inert gas welding skills would helpful. By luck, the team’s Ellery Kiesel had TIG experience and successfully fabricated a pressure vessel essential to manufacture the medical device. Judges evaluated the parts produced, considered surface finish, damage, and unfinished features, and other factors. Similar to a real-world scenario, precise inspections relied on automated equipment using a coordinated measurement machine.