I started at OCC about four years ago
when I took over there was about
fourteen students I accepted the job and
now it is that rate around a hundred
students so it's grown immensely we've
changed the location of the program and
moved into this beautiful facility to
where we can offer some quality
manufacturing classes of machine-tool of
annual classes and some CNC classes as
well that's a two-year program for an
associate's degree machine tool
technology I'm approaching the end I
know machining is a promising field and
I've heard good success stories I'm here
I looked at her Co CNC for two reasons
one as I had familiarity with them we're
at Ferris and I understood what they
were about the second reason was they
offered the opportunity for you to use
NC programming and conversational
programming all in one controller and
that is a big deal for my students they
have to understand G code so they can
make changes to programs and do things
like that but if they don't understand
the game yet conversational can get them
to the same category they can create
programs much much faster than writing
everything by hand so I have a project
that I use that has some basic drilled
holes some simple counter bores and an
island and what I do is I have the
students make that same part two
different ways one being G code where
they program it I call it longhand and
then they run that part and it usually
takes them on average about two and a
half to three hours to complete the
whole thing then I have them take that
same exact part and do it on the
conversational side from beginning to
end and what they did and two and a half
three hours for the g-code side they can
get done in about 45 minutes with the
conversational and that is really their
first look at the conversational control
they hadn't done anything else before
that it's really easy to use
user-friendly I mean I'm entry-level
obviously and I picked up on it fairly
quickly the students actually start out
in the manual side of the program and
that's for two reasons because they can
get their feet wet and understand the
movements of the machine and also learn
all the different tools that go along
with that whether it's an Mills reimers
what-have-you they need to understand
what those are then they
over to the her co side of the house and
we were actually using in four three
access Mills one five access mill two to
access lathes and one lathes with life
tooling the desktop software is
fantastic for the program it allows the
students to put it on their laptop they
can do everything at home from their old
PC they can set up tools they can learn
that controller and a know they can get
things done at home bring it in on a
flash drive or what have you and load it
into the machine tool and start running
right off the bat with her go you've
seen it come full circle to where it now
it's offering 3d models you can do
things with DXF files you can do all
those things with with the her go
control and every company that I talk to
are looking for people they are growing
that much they're putting on new
equipment all of that and that really
boils down to for the student a big wide
opportunity the occ program has prepared
me tremendously real-life experience
hands-on learning all the tools you need
are here