[Maxzillian]

Newton High School is very fortunate in that it has a partnership with Hutchinson Community College. In cooperation with the college there are programs for automotive, machining, welding, wood working and agriculture.

I was a product of this program when I was in school back in early 2000. Had I begun machining during my Junior year and continued through my senior year, I could have taken one additional year as an adult in the community college to become a certified machinist. Ultimately I only did my senior year and decided to venture after mechanical engineering instead of what could have been a very good employment in the tool and die industry.

Usually we only have one or two CNC machines operating at a time. Unless a student has a year or more of machining experience under their belt, they're usually not qualified for operate the CNC machines so the head coach/shop teacher will operate the machines. However, the students will design roughly 90-95% of the robot in Autodesk Inventor before we begin making any parts.

In this particular case, they didn't start machining the chassis until last weekend and the entire shooter was fabricated and completed over the span of a couple days. Despite not directly running the CNC machines, we still have a handful of students every year that will run the manual mills and lathes to fabricate parts and blank out material for the robot.

It's definitely a huge advantage for the team to have daily access to such a well equipped shop. The benefit is that it exposes the students to modern day manufacturing processes and design principles. It definitely gave me a huge upper hand in obtaining my mechanical engineering degree. I wouldn't hesitate to say that many of the things they learn wouldn't be taught to them until the second year of an engineering education.