OAK HILL, WV (WOAY) – High school seniors in the pre-engineering class at the Fayette Institute of Technology are scaling, modeling and presenting a project to a major manufacturing firm.
Every year, the class comes together with Conn-Weld Industries out of Princeton to find a solution to a problem the company gives them to work with. This year, the students undertook a manufacturing innovation challenge which they presented to Conn-Weld on Thursday.
“It gives them a real-world type of experience in an engineering atmosphere to work with industry professionals,” Engineering Technology instructor at FIT Scott McDaniel says.
The problem the students were tasked with involved taking a large screen used for manufacturing, scaling it down and making it function.
Using a computer modeling system and a 3D printer, the students managed to produce a scaled-down version of the screen, while also navigating the hurtles they ran into along the way.
“Getting everything scaled down and getting printing times within our time constraints, that was a bit difficult, plus we were tasked with the extra of making it shake,” pre-engineering student Jesse Foster says.
“I honestly think we did very well considering the time constraints being a big one as well as several other manufacturing issues we ran into,” adds Aubrey Sparks, another student in the class.
Despite the challenge, the overall consensus seemed to be that the project was a success.
“It was a really good experience to be able to create something like this and it’s going to be a tremendous help for them as well for like trade shows and stuff, so I thought it was a really nice project,” says Mahayla Fox, another pre-engineering student.
The students gained skills from the project which they will be able to take with them later on into the real-world of engineering.
FIT has been working with Conn-Weld over the past couple of years now through a program called Explore the New Manufacturing WV, in order to help the students build a future in the industry.
