Companies, Schools, MMEC Work Together

Three Montana companies hosted tours for a group of Helena school teachers in an effort to help raise awareness of the importance of CAD/CAM (computer aided design & computer aided manufacturing) training in public school courses.

Jim Weber, teaching Industrial Technology at Helena Middle School (grades 6-8), organized the tours as part of three technical workshops in his school district this spring (2001). Weber presently has the only CAD/CAM learning center in the Helena school district and is working to broaden training in this area. The tours of Gibson Guitar Corp. and Big Sky Laser Technologies in Bozeman and Dynojet Research in Belgrade were organized to bring home the importance of introducing advancing technologies into the classroom to keep students challenged and their skills meaningful in today's world. A mix of math, science, and industrial arts teachers participated in the workshops and tours during PIR days.

Weber also enlisted the help of MMEC field engineer Mark Shyne to demonstrate and talk about CAD/CAM real- world applications prior to the tours. As a statewide outreach program to assist manufacturers with business, technical and engineering issues, MMEC sees this technology at work everyday, and helping others to understand modern manufacturing is an important part of the center role. Shyne showed the group products made by Montana manufacturers using CAD/CAM technology and equipment and 3D drawings to illustrate the comprehensive, detailed output of CAD. He explained the technology benefits.

"CAD/CAM technologies increase the speed, accuracy and repeatability of production. These days, customers demand that 'perfectly built guitar' or that 'laser that stays aligned' regardless of where it is installed, and Montana companies are meeting those demands with the help of CAD/CAM technology," Shyne told the teachers. "It also reduces the cost of production and product development in the long term. With fierce competition from foreign suppliers, we need to keep the manual labor content of our domestically produced products in proper balance, or it becomes difficult to compete. These tools play an ever-increasing role in manufacturing today."

The company tours each offered a slightly different perspective on using the technology in its processes. At Gibson Guitar, programming engineer Lynn Palmer explained how she employs CAD in the mechanical design environment. She pointed out some of the complex design areas on a Gibson guitar that are more easily worked in CAD, notably the spot where the neck joins the guitar body. Palmer uses a mix of CAD output and basic drafting tools (protractor, compass, etc) to get to desired output for machining and says an understanding of both are needed. The time savings and accuracy benefits Shyne had introduced earlier were clearly illustrated. Supervisor of its engineering department, Scott McCullough, led the Gibson plant tour.

At Big Sky Laser Technologies, where Shyne was once Director of Engineering, the teachers saw leading edge solid state laser designs coming together. Components there are designed by mechanical engineers who incorporate the material properties of each part into the computer model. This speeds the analysis phase of product development by simulating the laser operation when subjected to shock and vibration, temperature variation, and other environmental conditions, according to Shyne. The designs are then exported electronically to CAM software that, with minimal manual intervention, converts the design information to machining instructions for CNC milling machines. This process allows Big Sky Laser to produce very precise components, with high repeatability and accuracy critical to the proper operation and interchangeability of laser components, earnings it a reputation for rugged design and tolerance of exposure to hot and cold environments (and handling) without constant re-optimizing or realigning.

Yet another aspect of CAD/CAM technology was explored at Dynojet Research, Inc. which produces products for the automotive and motorcycle industries. Joe Evers, a mechanical engineer for the company, introduced the group to the CAD package, Solidworks, and explained how it integrates into design work and new products. He showed them an in-house design for an injection-molded part which was sent as an electronic file to an off-site vendor who actually built the needed part. This versatile CAD system eliminates shipping drawings back and forth and cuts time and costs from design to finished product.

The two main thrusts of Dynojet's production are a chassis dynamometer to measure the horsepower of a vehicle at the driven wheels and an on-board computer add-on for fuel injected motorcycle engines that modifies fuel and ignition.

The tours emphasized the real-world uses and benefits of CAD/CAM in manufacturing today. Teachers from Helena High School, Helena Middle School, C.R. Anderson Middle School and Capitol High School participated.