TOWN OF MERTON – Since it opened in 2015, Arrowhead High School’s Design Engineering Manufacturing Center has helped students learn the skills needed to succeed in the technical education fields.
Now, with the continued help of Premier Machine Tool Midwest and Hwacheon Machinery America Inc., that education will be even more efficient. The school district has entered into a partnership with the businesses to install two brand-new machines made by Hwacheon in the DEMC for the 2017-18 school year.
Those machines will be rotated out, sold and new machines installed in their place every year for the next three years. The first two machines were installed during the summer.
“They did it completely for free. All the training is free, everything,” said Arrowhead technology and engineering teacher Tom Whelan said. “That’s been awfully nice.”
Whelan said that the machines were installed to help bring students into manufacturing and to demonstrate a manufacturing environment can be clean and inviting.
“You can have clean floors, you can have really nice equipment, and that’s what we were striving for,” Whelan said. “We’re not going to put hundreds of hours or thousands of hours on it, but we’re going to do enough to get the kids excited.”
Working in partnership
The idea originated with Robert Pellegrini, who was working for Hwacheon at the time. He and Whelan had been talking about Arrowhead’s DEMC, and were struggling to figure out how to put together a program to help the school’s manufacturing program, according to Premier Machine Tool Midwest co-owner AJ Schweda. Pellegrini then approached Schweda about what they could do to help.
“I went through this, and I was impressed,” said Schweda, an Arrowhead graduate. “The one thing I noticed was these kids are getting trained on the manufacturing process. They’re getting trained on programming machines, they’re getting trained on everything except having a machine. They don’t have it. They don’t know what their work is.”
After touring the DEMC with Premier Machine Tool Midwest co-owner Josh Witt, Schweda went to work crafting the three-year deal that’s now in place.
To help with the finances, he got help from the owners of PW Walsh, Mike and Randy Jacklin, as well as from Mark Menconi, the Wisconsin representative of Kennametal, and Dan Burghardt of Milacron Cimcool.
Other examples, program support
Whelan said one advantage to having the machinery available to students it that they can get real-world experience.
“We can directly work with some companies around the area and create part of their products,” Whelan explained..
Whelan is appreciative of the manufacturers’ efforts. “It’s great knowing that people want our school to be successful,” he said. “They know that the job market needs to be replenished, and they’re doing what they can on their part to provide that for our kids at Arrowhead.”
Read the entire article written by Alec Johnson, Now News Group (Click Here)
Premier is so proud to help our local High School with their manufacturing needs and look forward to a long successful relationship to help promote manufacturing to our local high school students.
Premier is excited to be your exclusive source in Wisconsin & UP of Michigan for all Hwacheon products. Please contact your Premier account representative today to learn more – Sales 414-254-5150 / info@pmtmidwest.com
