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“Dirty floors and oily machines?” “That’s my grandpa’s age,” said Yuchieh Lou, a student from Harper College. Manufacturing students from Harper College in Palatine, Illinois received first-hand exposure to today’s manufacturing as a high tech field and hopefully, are considering manufacturing as a viable career option. On Wednesday, April 6^th, 14 students who are enrolled in the Manufacturing Technology Program at Harper College visited OSG’s carbide tooling factory in Bensenville for a field trip.  This was conducted as part of OSG’s ongoing Manufacturing Day programs to inspire and support the next generation of manufacturing personnel.

Students started the day hearing presentations about OSG and available career paths. Our HR Generalist, Paul Wilhelm, explained to the students that the retirement of baby boomers is opening up positions for the younger generations in manufacturing. However, it is also creating a skills gap between the skills manufacturers are losing but require and the skills younger people have. Today’s manufacturers require new personnel to have more expertise in manufacturing such as STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematic) skills at an earlier stage of their career to close this gap. 

The students also learned about OSG products through tooling demonstrations in our R&D center. Lukasz Gaca, Machining Applications Engineer at OSG, showed various OSG tools in action. Students also tried hand tapping in a block of aluminum to provide them with some hands on experience with tapping tools.

“One of the exciting things about manufacturing is to create something from raw material,” said Dan Jack Combs, a Harper College student. 

After the tooling demonstrations, the students were taken on a plant tour. They were able to see OSG’s manufacturing floor in action with more than 60 CNC machines and in-house coating vessels for patented OSG CVD Diamond and AlTiN/TiAlN coating.

“From this visit, I realized that modern manufacturing does require higher technical skills,” said Billy Tsiveriotis, a Harper College student.

Harper College’s manufacturing department focuses on career readiness using a combination of classroom theory and hands on training with state-of-the-art machines that students will likely to encounter in the industry.

“Our goal in the manufacturing program at Harper College is to improve the caliber of students coming out of the program and getting hired by manufactures,” said Aaron Kolb, an instructor of the Manufacturing Technology Program at Harper College. “Manufacturing has become a high-tech career path with many options, and we work hard to make sure our curriculum matches the needs of manufacturers.”

OSG’s production team is hopeful and excited about the future of manufacturing as they interacted with the student and experienced their motivation and interest in manufacturing.

“Some of the students asked me what constitutes the best employees,” said Chuck Abate, Plant Manager of the OSG Bensenville factory. “I stressed teamwork, integrity and ability to continually learn in addition to technical skills.”

In order to help students get additional experiences and prepare for their manufacturing career, OSG offers an internship program at the Bensenville factory.

Did you know that some college students design and manufacture mini-baja vehicles and submarines? Not only do these students take engineering classes, but also they get to implement their knowledge by designing, machining parts and assembling a vehicle. We at OSG believe that such opportunities to actually manufacture a complete vehicle will inspire these future manufacturers and will develop their skills and creativity.

To help these students in their efforts to manufacture these vehicles, OSG donated over $30,000 in new cutting tools to the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Mini-Baja Racing Team at Purdue University and the Human Powered Submarine Team at the University of Michigan.

“Through our tooling donations to the Purdue University’s Mini-Baja Racing Team and the University of Michigan’s Human Powered Submarine Team, we hope to help these engineers better understand metal cutting through the use and applications of OSG’s advanced and innovative cutting tools,” said Mike Cotton, Marketing Manager at OSG.

The SAE Mini-Baja Racing Team at Purdue University designs, manufactures and races a one-person off-road vehicle.  The team participates in three regional competitions annually. The Human Powered Submarine Team at the University of Michigan also designs and fabricates their submarines to participate in national and international competitions.

Students of the Mini-Baja Racing Team and the Human Powered Submarine Team received the tooling donations last week, and they are getting ready to install the tools in their machines. 

“These end mills are very high quality, and we are excited to put them to good use,” said Tasha Gillum, a student from the University of Michigan’s Human Powered Submarine Team.

We were glad to see the students open the boxes of new tooling with big smiles on their faces. Seeing them excited to use our tools made us realize how important it is for us to be a part of educating manufacturing students. We continue to actively work with technical colleges and universities to demonstrate our commitment to inspire the next generation of manufacturers.