charlie gary
Stainless
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2009
- Location
- near Seattle, Washington, USA
... to Want Jobs in Manufacturing
OK, my thread title exceeded the text box limits.
The thing that sparked me to start this thread was a phone call from a guy I've built high school robot parts with for the last nine years. When we first met he had a high school freshman daughter who was on a First Robotics team, and I was a guy who got a call from the technical college I graduated from and serve on the advisory council for asking if I could help these kids build robot parts because the shop that had been helping them was too busy to do so any more.
The first year we met at the school on Saturdays for a few months while the kids designed and built robots for competition with parts I machined in the shop with the help of a couple other guys associated with the school's machine shop class. The next year we put together a class for the kids and enrolled them as students so they could go out into the shop and make their own parts with guidance from a few of us at the school.
The students had to design their own parts, and when the kid who eventually graduated and went to Olin College before graduating from there and getting his dream job at Tesla was designing the parts we machined a lot of pretty nice stuff.
Now the team's lead students are closer to the normal/genius line of life, so a lot of what they do consists of buying aluminum extruded rails and kit motors and gear boxes combined with a liberal sprinkling of McMaster-Carr components. That's quite alright. When you've only got six weeks to build and box up a robot for competition, relying on custom components is really risky if you're not a gifted designer and engineer.
OK, I'll get to the point of my post. The phone call I got was from a guy who's daughter and son both participated in the program. His daughter has since graduated from Oregon State as a mechanical engineer, and his son is now enrolled in an automotive program at a technical college, meaning he's like me- he no longer has a kid in the program. I never did, but I always figured if my kids didn't want to learn it, I guess it was on me to find some who did if I wanted to pass it on. He went on to mention that there were NO mechanical mentors who had kids in the program, and those of us who were still there two nights a week and Saturdays (not me anymore) were getting to the point they wanted to do other things with their time.
While that's an issue that will have to be brought up with this individual set of parents, the greater issue at hand is the fact that volunteers need to recruit replacement volunteers to keep the pool of interest interesting. People in the industry can have a positive impact on our future of manufacturing in whatever country we live in if we can get some face time with school-age people and show them how things can be made. I've been exposed to a few hundred high school kids by now, and more than a handful have thanked me for exposing them to the possibilities and gone on to become professionals involved in manufacturing.
How do volunteers get involved? One way is for other volunteers to evangelize a little bit. If you don't hear about something you're less likely to know it's out there, so I'm bringing it up today.
I am not a repository of information on how to get involved in your local area, but with any luck this thread itself will become one as others come up with suggestions on how to spread the love of manufacturing and infecting our youth with a love of all things manufacturing related.
I personally help a high school team competing in First Robotics, so I've attached a link to their mentor information page. You might also contact your local school and ask if they have any kind of robotics/mechatronics etc. clubs looking for mentors. It's more fun than I ever thought it would be.
Mentors and Coaches | FIRST
OK, my thread title exceeded the text box limits.
The thing that sparked me to start this thread was a phone call from a guy I've built high school robot parts with for the last nine years. When we first met he had a high school freshman daughter who was on a First Robotics team, and I was a guy who got a call from the technical college I graduated from and serve on the advisory council for asking if I could help these kids build robot parts because the shop that had been helping them was too busy to do so any more.
The first year we met at the school on Saturdays for a few months while the kids designed and built robots for competition with parts I machined in the shop with the help of a couple other guys associated with the school's machine shop class. The next year we put together a class for the kids and enrolled them as students so they could go out into the shop and make their own parts with guidance from a few of us at the school.
The students had to design their own parts, and when the kid who eventually graduated and went to Olin College before graduating from there and getting his dream job at Tesla was designing the parts we machined a lot of pretty nice stuff.
Now the team's lead students are closer to the normal/genius line of life, so a lot of what they do consists of buying aluminum extruded rails and kit motors and gear boxes combined with a liberal sprinkling of McMaster-Carr components. That's quite alright. When you've only got six weeks to build and box up a robot for competition, relying on custom components is really risky if you're not a gifted designer and engineer.
OK, I'll get to the point of my post. The phone call I got was from a guy who's daughter and son both participated in the program. His daughter has since graduated from Oregon State as a mechanical engineer, and his son is now enrolled in an automotive program at a technical college, meaning he's like me- he no longer has a kid in the program. I never did, but I always figured if my kids didn't want to learn it, I guess it was on me to find some who did if I wanted to pass it on. He went on to mention that there were NO mechanical mentors who had kids in the program, and those of us who were still there two nights a week and Saturdays (not me anymore) were getting to the point they wanted to do other things with their time.
While that's an issue that will have to be brought up with this individual set of parents, the greater issue at hand is the fact that volunteers need to recruit replacement volunteers to keep the pool of interest interesting. People in the industry can have a positive impact on our future of manufacturing in whatever country we live in if we can get some face time with school-age people and show them how things can be made. I've been exposed to a few hundred high school kids by now, and more than a handful have thanked me for exposing them to the possibilities and gone on to become professionals involved in manufacturing.
How do volunteers get involved? One way is for other volunteers to evangelize a little bit. If you don't hear about something you're less likely to know it's out there, so I'm bringing it up today.
I am not a repository of information on how to get involved in your local area, but with any luck this thread itself will become one as others come up with suggestions on how to spread the love of manufacturing and infecting our youth with a love of all things manufacturing related.
I personally help a high school team competing in First Robotics, so I've attached a link to their mentor information page. You might also contact your local school and ask if they have any kind of robotics/mechatronics etc. clubs looking for mentors. It's more fun than I ever thought it would be.
Mentors and Coaches | FIRST
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