Saturday, August 18, 2007

Education for technicians I thought I'd be done with my September Automation World writing by Friday, so I made an appointment to visit the robot lab at Ohio Northern University (see my previous post). Got a tour with Adam Stienecker (turns out I know his family through soccer). Every time I see these programs (same as hearing NI's Ray Almgren talk about education through experience), I wish they'd have had more of this in the mid-60s when I was in engineering school. This particular lab is a Technology program and the students go from CAD to controls/electronics to machining. Tremendous background for a young person entering the manufacturing workforce. Every time I hear other editors playing Chicken Little about the coming doom in American manufacturing because us old guys are getting ready for retirement, I see these programs that are doing a tremendous job of preparing the next generation of manufacturing geeks. A little plug for Kuka Robotics who has helped tremendously with the program. I think I counted a total of 6 Kuka robots in the department--5 in a lab and 1 in prototype. I put some photos on Flickr. By the way, Kuka uses a type of PC-based control that allows Stienecker to attach a monitor. In this way he can see what the student is doing or show the class things since the attached pendant programming tool is really only viewable by one person. 8:42:37 AM    comment []

Automation Minutes podcast posted Episode 37 of Automation Minutes has been posted. I excerpt my marketing communications keynote at PTO, updates the State Model challenge from end users discussing an interview with Rockwell and NI's new state chart module, reviews technology advances revealed at NI Week, and touches on travel to SEW Eurodrive and Ohio Northern University's robot lab. 8:12:51 AM    comment []