Local students are getting an education this week in the industrial arts during the Manufacturing Camp at Coosa Valley Technical College.
Students are getting a look into the world of how things are made, including hands on opportunities to control robots, learn how traffic light circuits work and even a spot of welding.
“It’s something that you can pick up fairly quickly,” said Bill Scoggins, an instructor in automated machines at Coosa Valley Tech. “It’s much easier to learn how to control these robots than I originally thought it was going to be myself.”
Scoggins showed three students how to program the robot arms to pick up a power drink bottle and then drop it at another spot on the table.
14-year-old Pierce Henson said that it was fun playing with the robot arm, and was surprised how easy it was to control.
“It’s a whole lot easier than I thought it would be be,” Pierce said. “With all the controls and buttons I thought it was going to be much harder, but I’ve had good instruction.”
Other students, like April Paynter, were working on building their own red light circuits. She had already had her chance of working with the robots, but was excited about trying out other activities.
“I was looking forward to playing with the robots,” April said. “But I got to work on that on Monday.”
April found out about the camp last week at the Boys and Girls Club and decided to give it a shot, thinking that it would be a good experience.
“I thought it would be very interesting,” April said.
Many students have made great progress with welding. Some, according to welding instructor Joe Burrage, could have a future in his program.
“A couple of girls we had yesterday did pretty decent with only 20 minutes of instruction,” Burrage said. “I was ready to bring them into my program right then and there, but they were two years too young.”
Burrage was especially happy to be involved in the camp, since he is seeing a higher demand for welders in industry jobs that pay between $20 and $28 an hour.
“A lot of these kids have no idea what they want to do, so this is great for them to get some experience,” Burrage said. “I wanted to teach welding when I was in high school, so I got lucky doing what I wanted to do.”
Burrage stressed that while welding isn’t the safest thing for 14-year-old students to be doing, they are continually stressing safety at all times in his shop.
“One day isn’t enough to teach them more than the basics,” Burrage said. “But we’re giving them something they can think about doing later. And we stress safety as the biggest thing they can learn while we’re teaching them how to weld.”
The camp also includes trips to local manufacturers like F&P Georgia Manufacturing Inc., Pirelli Tire North America, and Suzuki Manufacturing-America.
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