Manufacturing Engineering Technician students – “Wired to Industry”
Posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2015
At a recent visit to Central Wire Industries in Perth, Ontario students from the Manufacturing Engineering Technician program handed over a number of finished, custom design and manufactured Wire Tensioner devices.
The Wire Tensioner project was part of the Mechanical Design course in the final semester of our Manufacturing Engineering Technician program. It was a two stage process where the graduating level students from our program design the project and our students coming into the fall of the next year manufacture the components and assemble the completed project.
Our second year mechanical design students were set-up with local companies, in this case Central Wire Industries (CWI) in Perth ON, who had a project or idea that they would like to have worked on but did not have the skills, resources or time to pursue. These second year students designed the components and assemblies in 3D solid modeling CADD (Computer Aided Design and Drafting) in the winter of 2014.
Once those students had completed the program in April of 2014, the program faculty and staff then produced a working prototype of the student design and brought it to CWI. CWI then set-up the Wire Tensioner and used it for a period of two weeks. CWI then asked for a few modifications to the design. The modifications were completed in CADD as well as the working prototype.
In the fall of 2014, CWI then provided Manufacturing Engineering Technician program all of the required materials and tooling needed to machine the components for fourteen assembled units. Our Manufacturing Engineering Technician students, under the supervision of our Faculty, provided the skilled labor to produce those assemblies. This was the first project produced by our new program and its success speaks volumes about the students, staff and Central Wire Industries working together.
Read more about this fantastic collaborative project in the following Algonquin Times news story by Sean Minaker here – http://algonquintimes.com/innovations/students-wired-to-industry/ .