Skilled Hands for Midwest Employers

Serving more than 20,000 students annually, Southwestern Illinois College (SWIC) is the largest community college south of the Chicago area. There are actually three campuses in the district - Belleville, Sam Wolf Granite City and Red Bud - as well as numerous off-campus sites, such as East St. Louis Community College Center and Scott Air Force Base. While there are many fields of study offered by the college, it is at the Industrial Technology Center, located at the Sam Wolf Granite City campus, that an in-depth Precision Machining Technology program has been attracting the attention of manufacturing companies throughout the area.

Mark Bosworth is the Industrial Technology Coordinator at the Center and oversees programs ranging from Precision Machining to Industrial Maintenance, Commercial Maintenance and Pipefitting. "As recently as 2008, SWIC offered only an Industrial Machining program with manual machining equipment," he said. "There were no courses available for CAD/CAM programming or CNC machine tools. The program was limited to a few night courses and struggled with extremely low enrollment."

After teaching at a technical college in St. Louis for 13 years, Bosworth decided to head to Southwestern Illinois College and take on the challenge of revitalizing its machining program, growing it into the current Precision Machining Technology. "The main reason for the move from St. Louis to Metro-East Illinois was that SWIC's tuition is a third of the cost at the private college where I had been teaching," he said. "I had a feeling that there were many students in the area who would make great machinists, but could not afford to go to college across the river."

Bosworth knew the first thing necessary to start building the new program would be to obtain CNC equipment and corresponding programming software systems. "We purchased three Haas CNC machines and ordered a few seats of Mastercam (CNC Software, Inc.) and in the first year we just offered classes in CNC programming and basic Mastercam," he said. "From that point on, the enrollment just kept growing. Last year we started 74 new students and another 74 this past August. The department has doubled its floor space twice since 2008 and we currently have 11 CNC machine tools, 10 vertical mills, 10 lathes, three surface grinders and miscellaneous ancillary machinery. We are offering four manual machining classes, four CNC programming classes, three Mastercam classes, a SolidWorks class, a metallurgy class and a print reading class. Students can earn a two-year Associate in Applied Science Degree as well as valuable certificates of achievement. The program is certified by the National Institute for Metalworking Skills (NIMS) and most students earn NIMS Machining Level 1 Credentials."

SWIC currently has more than 70 seats of Mastercam licensing, with 22 of the seats used in the three Mastercam courses on campus, while the remaining seats have been placed in local high schools to help bolster their machining programs. This encourages interest among high school students to focus their education toward careers in precision machining. The first SWIC course is Introduction to Mastercam, which concentrates on design and basic machining operations. The Advanced class moves into Work Coordinate Systems (WCS), planes and 3D machining. The final course in the program is the Multi-axis class, where students learn the basics of multi-axis operations including indexing, tombstone machining and fifth-axis machining.

"The last six years have been very challenging, but it has been amazing for me to see the growth and achievements of the students," said Bosworth. "A major part of the program, and of the students' success, has been the great support from Mastercam and Haas Automation. Without their support, it would have been very difficult for us to reach our goals. The folks at Mastercam's Education Division, especially Applications Engineer Will Slota, are always available to answer my questions and guide us through some of the more difficult projects. My own growth in Mastercam capabilities has reached the point that I was able to teach a class to instructors last summer at Mastercam's facilities in Gig Harbor, WA. I am also grateful for the support of our Mastercam resellers, DEPCO LLC in Pittsburg, KS, and QTE Manufacturing Solutions in St. Louis, MO. DEPCO helps on the educational side and QTE with industrial issues. Some of the SWIC instructors have graduates that are working at QTE now and that has proven to be an asset at times."

According to Bosworth, there are two roles for Mastercam at Southwestern Illinois College. The first is to help recruit new students. That is achieved through the placement of all those Mastercam seats in the area's high schools. "I have found that learning standard software codes, such as those for G and M programming, is boring for high school students and does not promote the machining field among them - and probably hurt recruitment more than helped it. But, when I made Mastercam available to the high schools, I had an overwhelming response. In addition to providing them with Mastercam, every time I replace equipment at SWIC, I donate the used equipment to them. Seven local high schools have received 25 pieces of equipment from us during the past four years. I am also frequently at high schools giving presentations on precision machining career opportunities and SWIC's program. Just about every week one or more high school instructors will call me for Mastercam help or with general machining questions. Any time I can get in front of the high school students is an opportunity to spread the good word about SWIC. Most of the machining students in our local high schools know me by my first name, which helps significantly with our recruiting efforts. Many instructors in those schools have told me that without Mastercam, their programs might no longer be around. It has triggered so much interest that many of their programs have seen steady growth. It is my goal to help our high schools as much as I can. They are the future of this country and of my program."

"The second role of Mastercam at SWIC," he continued, "is to expose our students to the most-used CAD/CAM programs in industry. The students here at SWIC learn everything from basic design to multi-axis programming. After they complete all three courses they have a very good understanding of Mastercam and some go right into a programming position at one of the region's manufacturing companies."

Currently, there are three instructors teaching Mastercam. The classes are set up to accomplish the course objectives, but the instructors have the ability to design their own projects. One instructor might start his class with a print that needs to be drawn and toolpaths created within a set time period, while another instructor may focus on a project that has six or seven parts comprising a desk clock. The Intro to Mastercam class usually starts with a packet of prints that the students have to reproduce. These prints teach the students essentially all of the features that Mastercam offers. All the prints the students reproduce are then used to create toolpaths. The first machined part is usually a nameplate with a pocketing feature. By the time students are in the Mastercam class, they have had the CNC programming experience that helps them troubleshoot any problems that might occur when they are working on their projects. "We try to teach our students many ways to troubleshoot problems that may occur, because that is a skill that most machinists must have to be successful," said Bosworth.

The Advanced Mastercam class also starts out with prints and is where students are introduced to 3D machining, creating surfaces, working with Work Coordinate System (WCS) and building solids in Mastercam. The final course is the Mastercam/Multi-axis class. "In this class," said Bosworth, "we expose our students to fourth- and fifth-axis projects, along with live tooling lathe operations. It may be hard to teach all the capabilities inherent with Mastercam, but if we provide our students a good understanding of the software, we believe they will be ready for a very successful career. Without Mastercam, it would be very difficult to provide graduates that could help industry grow and prosper."

"When it comes to Mastercam features," continued Bosworth, "one of my favorites is Rast2vec. It allows students to design parts they have an interest in, such as components for the automotive industry, or for outdoor equipment or even gifts for family members. It helps them stay focused on their class work. Another feature I like, and use to help recruit new students, is Art (an image cut into an opaque plastic or a similar material that displays the image when held to a light). Students are just amazed that Mastercam and a CNC machine tool are capable of producing a piece of art. It draws so much attention that we might consider developing a class that focuses strictly on artistic projects."

With two rounds of Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training grants totaling $2 million, SWIC has been able to more than double the size of the machine shop and purchase five CNC machines with multi-axis capabilities. "We were also able to upgrade all of the tooling and fixturing components in the CNC lab, along with upgrading our Mastercam to multi-axis," said Bosworth. "In addition, most of the materials for the Mastercam projects have come from a local aerospace company, Austin Machine in O'Fallon, MO. They usually bring four pallets of aluminum in different thicknesses each time. Without this donation, it would be very hard to complete some of our projects." Also, local manufacturing companies such as Chelar Tool & Die, Ehrhardt Tool and Machine, Boeing, Cope Plastic and Alro Steel donate miscellaneous materials and tooling to give SWIC students a wide variety for the completion of their projects.

"With the diverse program that we have created at SWIC, many companies are coming to us as their first choice to hire machinists and programmers," said Bosworth. "Chelar, Ehrhardt, Boeing, Cope, Arnett Pattern, Carr Lane, Red Bud Industries, PTL Manufacturing, Bachman Machine and many others in the area employ SWIC graduates. Having a good mix of manual machining, CNC machining, Mastercam and all of the related courses is unmatched by any other educational machining program in the area. In the past two years, most of our first-year students have found part-time work in the machining field. Many companies are now hiring our students part-time because they know that if they wait until the students graduate after the two-year program, they might lose them to a rival employer."

For more information contact:

Mark Bosworth

SWIC Precision Machining Technology

Program Coordinator

4950 Maryville Road

Granite City, IL 62040

618-931-0600 ext. 7457

mark.bosworth@swic.edu

www.swic.edu

CNC Software, Inc.

671 Old Post Road

Tolland, CT 06084

860-875-5006

info@mastercam.com

www.mastercam.com