Kansas City and the surrounding community are home to hundreds of manufacturers and thousands of manufacturing jobs. MCC-Business & Technology is committed to preparing its students for the manufacturing jobs of the future. Whereas manufacturing 50 years ago required massive amounts of unskilled manual laborers, manufacturing of the present and future require skilled technicians who understand the process, software and hardware involved in stereolithography, selective laser sintering, laser scanning, and 3D printing to name a few.
Last week, in beautiful Irvine, Calif. (while the rest of us sweltered in the summer heat), Tom Wheeler, Penny Tepesch, David Hawkins, Jen Dec, Chris Page and Steve Dowell attended the 2010 RapidTech workshop at Saddleback Community College to learn about the latest manufacturing technologies.
RapidTech is an educational entity designed to offer learning opportunities for students to learn and use these advanced manufacturing technologies. The key to RapidTech’s success is its continual collaboration on projects with national businesses in the aerospace, medical device, automotive, consumer products and art animation industries.
MCC's goal is to also be an expert resource, partner, consultant and learning facility to students, businesses, and educational institutions. The trip to Rapidtech's workshop was aimed at attendees learning how RapidTech has partnered and affiliated themselves with over 80 other institutions to achieve these goals.
“Our group worked alongside approximately 50 other attendees learning how many of these technologies in our own school can be utilized to better achieve our goals here at the BTC,” said manufacturing instructor Steve Dowell. “From 8 a.m. until approximately 5:30 p.m., the agenda was packed with instructor workshops, dealer demos, and very informative presentations from other colleges from around the country. Our goal now is to take what was presented to us at the workshop and apply these processes to better utilize the BTC's labs, classrooms, and instructors.”
MCC-BTC continues to build its 3D prototyping lab. We now have the ability to concept a product or part, create the design using 3D software, print the prototype design on 3D printers and finally create the part in our manufacturing lab.
According to Tom Wheeler, dean of instruction, “the next step is to continue reaching out to local manufacturers to create a consortium that fosters learning, collaboration and provides value to our students, these manufacturers and our community.”
“We are a community college," said Wheeler. "We are here to serve the community and prepare the workforce our industry partners need. The better we understand the current and and developing technologies, the better we are able to meet that mission. community the better we are able to deliver.”
For more information or to schedule a tour of BTC’s 3D prototyping lab, contact William Allyn at 816.604.5647 or Chris Page at 816.604.5438
For more information about the RapidTech workshop click here.
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