Wentworth: Lessons from One Year of Teaching CNC Programmers
N
ovember marked the one year anniversary of the opening of Wentworth Institute of Technology’s new $3 million Manufacturing Center in Boston, and the
school’s engineering faculty said they are seeing the fruits of their labor.
As they set out to build a 21st century applications lab where students gain hands-on experience working with modern manufacturing technology, it required Wentworth to rethink its methods for teaching machining manufacturing. Previously, “old machine usage was very vocational,”
said Associate Professor Peter Rourke. But “we decided that we needed to break the mold by not teaching manual machining first. CNC has become central to the machining experience.” To make the right move into CNC machining, the process
required faculty to road test a number of machines. The pro- cess was thorough, but after reviewing a number of different machines, Rourke said: “The decision was nearly unanimous.”
Rourke added that “new students are very computer literate” and are “far more comfortable” with CNC than in the past. Of course, they still have to do things such as tram a vise and use an edge finder, but Rourke said the “repetitive tasks are gone,” and CNC skills are the new focus. In fact, manual machinist skills are not being taught
anymore at Wentworth because there is not much demand for it. New England manufacturers perform work that is often too complex or has a higher tolerance than can be done manually. These companies are looking to new high-tech CNC equipment to meet their needs and require people with strong CNC skills. “Many people’s skills are outdated so they look to younger
people’s skills on new equipment,” said Rourke. At the lab, the process of learning CNC is tactile from the start. In their “Introduction to CNC” class, engineering students machine a small two-stroke engine. In the past, tech- nicians would help handle the setup. But now, students work the whole manufacturing process, from design to production.
Manual machinist skills are not being taught anymore at Wentworth because there is not much demand for it.
Wentworth “found ProtoTRAK machines to be the perfect landing spot, because they allow manual operation and the students can continue right into full CNC operation.” Also, because “the controls stay pretty much the same from milling to turning to the machining center” students can quickly reap- ply their programming knowledge from one machine type to another. In total, Wentworth purchased 14 ProtoTRAK CNC machines: six CNC knee mills, one CNC bed mill, six CNC lathes, and one machining center.
“We make the students make the parts,” said Rourke. After that class, the emphasis continues to be hands-on. For example, in the “Computer Aided Manufacturing” course, Rourke said, “we go right from CAM into the TRAKS.” Practi- cal experience is held at a premium. In the Manufacturing Center’s Mechanical Engineering
and Technology Department, students spend time learning within the lab and in the workforce through cooperative edu- cation (co-op) experiences.