The Dunn County News: For Ryan Sterry it was about like playing with a video game or a remote control toy. But the Menomonie High School technical education teacher had a lot more in mind than fun and games as he used a controller to manipulate a robotic arm inside the Chippewa Valley Technical College Mobile Manufacturing Lab Tuesday, July 24.
The lab is coming to Menomonie High School in November, and is staying through January, thanks to a National Science Foundation (NSF) Smart Manufacturing and Resources for Transforming the Future (SMART Future) grant announced in June. Through the grant, CVTC will partner with four rural high schools, including Menomonie, to incorporate industrial automation and networking principles into the high school curriculum.
Sterry has been at the CVTC Manufacturing Education Center recently for training that will help him make the best of the high-tech equipment in the mobile lab.
“The lab is going to allow us to teach concepts that would be difficult to teach otherwise,” Sterry said. “We don’t have access to this equipment.”
“We’re bringing in our electromechanical trainers and the PLC (programmable logic control) trainers,” said Andrew Kott, the CVTC instructor who will work directly with students in the mobile lab. “We’re also going to bring Fanuc Robotics Arms. They’re Certified Educational Robotics Training (CERT) units.”