Imparting Skills, Building Institutions

Long before the 33,000 members of the International Association of Machinists District 751 in Seattle gained their new contract with Boeing, the IAM had earned their loyalty by establishing a stand-alone, non-profit training organization, to prepare union members to perform their tasks better and to prepare them for greater career potential.

It’s called the Machinists Institute, and as senior director of Operations Adam Grim explained, its mission is to expand pathways into good jobs and manage apprenticeship programs for the aerospace sector in Washington, and then expand nationally from there. That objective is taking off.

“We started the school in 2019 with four different career tracks — Machinist, Industrial Machinery Technician, Heavy Duty Equipment Mechanic, and Trailer, Container, Van Repair Mechanic — and have since added Fabrication Welder,” Grim recalled. “The latter is a three-year, 6,000-hour program, while the others are all 8,000 hours and four years in length.

“But we also provide youth- and pre-apprenticeships that are designed to give the 16-to-24-year-old age group a pathway into the manufacturing trades,” he noted

In addition, the Machinists Institute offers numerous standalone training opportunities covering a wide range of manufacturing skills. Machining is one, of course, but there are also programs for welding and hydraulics training, digital literacy, and customized courses designed to meet an employer’s (or prospective employer’s) specific needs.

Rapid growth

As Grim noted, the Institute’s executive team is taking these programs well beyond the Pacific Northwest and the considerable aerospace industry there. Though it’s been only five years since it welcomed the first students, the Machinists Institute currently has two fully functioning facilities — one in Seattle, the other in Spokane — while currently building out new facilities near Boeing’s main assembly plant in Everett and servicing the greater Portland area from Vancouver, Wash.

“We’re also expanding down into California and have plans for facilities in Oakland and Long Beach,” he said.

These developments present a win-win situation for manufacturers and employees. Because apprenticeships offer learners a chance to earn a much-needed paycheck while they are still in school, the Institute is great news for young people who want a good-paying career without assuming a crushing student-loan debt. And for employers, it helps address the chronic shortage of skilled labor while fostering a sense of loyalty among their workers, increasing the likelihood of long-term retention.

“At the Machinists Institute, our apprentices are sponsored through their place of employment,” Grim explained. “Here, students work full-time for that employer and then come to our facility once or twice a week to continue their education and work towards that journey card. So, it's a combination of on-the-job hours learning and working on the very equipment they use every day, and classroom instruction, what we call Related Supplemental Instruction, or RSI.”

To accomplish its goals, however, the Machinists Institute first needed a curriculum and instructors, together with an assortment of high-quality machinery. Blake Horton, lead instructor and regional director of operations for the Puget Sound location, explained the development of each. “When I started here, all we had was a concrete floor and a mission,” he said. “We designed our apprenticeship programs from the ground up using Canvas, a learning-management system, along with a number of other educational content providers, such as Tooling U-SME and Amatrol, and Electude on the automotive side.”

Cranking the handles

And yet, there’s far more to machining than online and classroom training, Horton continued. Machinists, programmers, engineers, and technicians must learn how to make parts if they're to be successful, and for this the Machinists Institute provides a full complement of control simulators and programming systems on which to build a solid foundation, followed by plenty of hands-on, practical experience working on high-quality machine tools from Kent USA.

To date, the Machinists Institute has installed 14 of Kent USA machines and has three more on the way. All the machines have been sourced through Mike Ouellet, Western U.S. sales consultant for New Vision Machine Tools, a Kent USA distributor in Sandy, Utah, that Grim and Horton agree has provided “spectacular support.”

The selection of machines is split almost evenly between KTM-3VKF CNC knee mills with the Acu-Rite MILLPWR G2 conversational control, and CSM-1140 CNC precision teach lathes with Acu-Rite's TURNPWR turning control.

Asked why the school chose so-called "half CNC" machines over the CNC machining centers and lathes (which Kent USA also offers) that students will encounter on almost any production floor, Horton offered some compelling arguments. Perhaps most important is that the combination of manual and CNC in a single machine provides students with an easily understandable progression. They get a chance to turn the handles and feel how the cutting tool interacts with the workpiece material, and later see how that relates to the programmed toolpaths and what the control is showing them.

“There's just not a lot of people working today who have both manual and CNC experience, so no matter where you end up after graduation, learning the basics of machining on a manual lathe or mill is an invaluable experience,” he said.

Another win-win

Fortunately, the Machinists Institute has found an unexpected resource to help them teach these basic skills: a large number of retired manual machinists and industrial craftspeople can step right up to the school’s mills and lathes, turn them on, and start making parts. This gives the Institute a pool of talented, experienced instructors from which to draw — people who understand how to operate these machines and are willing to help train a new generation of machinists

Horton noted that some of his students have never used any kind of machine tool, not even a drill press or band saw. Giving them an opportunity to learn about spindles and axis motion, and what X, Y, and Z mean, and then showing them how these basic concepts relate to cutter selection, feeds and speeds, workholding, measuring part dimensions, and everything else a machinist must know … this hands-on teaching approach is much more effective than saying, ‘Here’s a CNC lathe, now push these buttons and watch what happens. We’ll have a quiz this afternoon.’

“I truly believe that we're creating skilled, journey-level craftspeople here,” Horton said. “These are folks who can come out of the program and go to work solving problems for their employers, not creating them.”

He continued: “On the Machinist track, for instance, they leave here with a well-rounded understanding of manual and CNC machining, CAD/CAM, engineering and the principles of design for manufacturability, metrology, and even advanced, Industry-4.0 topics like automation and additive manufacturing.

“And for those who aren’t ready to commit to an apprenticeship, we teach many of these subjects in our other programs.” Horton added.

“The Machinists Institute is built on a lifelong learning model,” Grim summarized. “We have teenagers getting their first taste of hand tools and welders, all the way up to experienced Boeing employees and union members, some of them in their fifties but wanting to learn new skills to advance their careers.

“At the same time, if an employer comes to us with a specific training need, we can create a program for that as well,” he offered. “So, we're not just pre-apprenticeship or apprenticeship, nor just another school or training organization — we’re a little bit of everything, but above all we have to be nimble in today’s rapidly changing manufacturing environment. I’m glad to have partners like Kent USA and New Vision Machine Tools to support us in this endeavor.”

Kip Hanson is a technical writer. Contact him at [email protected]