Two of the requests made this year by Alvirne High School to the Alvirne Trustees were in relation to CTE programs.
One of the requests was for engineering classes. “This is a Robot Arm and CNC Machine,” Alvirne High School Principal Steve Beals said during the meeting.
As part of the proposal Beals wrote, “I would like to propose to the trustees to purchase a Cobot Robotic Arm with an ATC for the CNC vertical end mill in the Engineering Program’s Innovation Lab.”
This combination would allow for the CNC Machine to have a robot put the work(stock) into the machine, and the machine will run autonomously. The machine will be able to swap tools and run this through multiple jobs and operations,” Beals said. “The robot arm is from the same company as the CNC (tormach) and would be able to communicate directly with it. The cost includes delivery and setup/installation and training for it. This is a current trend in industry with a cobot (collaborative robot arm) tending the CNC machine. This could be running 24/7, but I would only suggest students run operations during the day.”
The cost of it would be a total of $40,000.
It was explained by Beals during the meeting that if they were able to obtain it, there wouldn’t be much work needed to be done.
“This would require minimal maintenance and upkeep,” Beals said. “Many of the companies on my PAC have or are in the process of having a cobot run with a CNC “lights out.” Meaning it is running 24/7 with sensors to detect if something goes wrong and a live feed for monitoring. There is no better way to prepare students for this.”
Another item proposed to the Alvirne Trustees was for the new Dental Assisting Clinic & Program for a total of $41,042. It included things like dental radiography manikins, dentoforms and teeth, and a Lux Creo 3D Printer among other things for the program.
During the meeting, one of the questions asked was what the enrollment for Health Science was for next year.
Beals explained that if they are able to fill their open vacancy for a teacher, they would want to run two sections of Health Science 1 and Health Science 2. He also explained that during Health Science 2 is when students explore different specialities including ones like the dental program.
The same question was also asked about the enrollment for the engineering program with Beals explaining that they have three sections scheduled.
A total of $546,869 worth of proposed requests were sent to the Alvirne Trustees for its consideration.
