Oct 7th , 2016 was a great day at Suncoast Technical College in Sarasota, Florida. We were able to host over 200 Sarasota County Career and Technical Education students – CTE – and show them about our school and also about manufacturing.  These students were very engaged especially in our award winning Precision & CNC Machining Automation Lab.

We had three separate groups of high school and middle school students from various schools. It was organized by Martha Proulx and Ron DiPillo from the Sarasota County CTE department. They had buses going here and there, picking up at schools, tour a manufacturing facility and tour Suncoast Technical College.  The students were prepped before hand by using the Made in Florida training module from Florida Advanced Technical Education Center – FL ATE in Tampa. They toured companies like ASO Corporation – Medical bandages , Black Diamond Guitar Strings and KHS America – High Speed Packaging – all in Sarasota.

When they arrived at STC we had an Edufactor conference first. We showed stories on people who are makers and stories like the Chilean miner rescue and What will you Discover.  The exciting people like Titan Gilroy , host of the show Titan – American Built, talking about becoming a machinist.  And wrapping up with Jeremy Bout – Edge Factor story about a young woman’s journey becoming a manufacturing engineer.

Then we had all students tour our STC Drafting and Design department where we teach Solidworks and Autocad. Drafting also has 3D printing and a Davinci CNC Router to make projects that are designed.  The DaVinci is equipped to do great projects from Cuda Country like the balsa wood CO2 dragster car.

Then we are in the CNC Machining Department where all Haas CNC machinery and the adult students were able to show projects and give way many pieces as MFG Day mementos. We even had some students setup and run a CNC Lathe to make a Chess Pawn.

So there you have it, trying to show students other avenues that you can take in life.  Good careers need good training and you may even like what you do. Making things that people use.