HERKIMER – When new Herkimer-Fulton-Hamilton-Otsego BOCES Advanced Manufacturing instructor Peter Stone found out five days before a Herkimer BOCES board meeting that Technical Education programs typically create gifts to give the board for School Board Recognition each October, he gave his students a challenge.
The Valley Pathways in Technology Early College High School juniors and seniors who take Advanced Manufacturing were assigned to create a drill vice on a plaque engraved with a message and all of the students’ names.
“There were 64 operations and nine parts, and we did it in five days,” Stone said.
The drill vice plaque was presented to the Herkimer BOCES Board of Education in October in honor of the annual School Board Recognition Week. The item represented a gift of what the students learn in class, Stone said.
“It’s a very fitting way I think for students to give a gift to the board members,” he said. “They did a nice job on it.”
Advanced Manufacturing is an important class for VP-TECH students because they learn many skills, and there are many opportunities in advanced manufacturing, Stone said.
“Manufacturing creates everything from cinder blocks to rocket ships,” he said.
VP-TECH senior Jordan Corsette, of Central Valley, said the project entailed many aspects of the Advanced Manufacturing program.
“The vice is a good representation of the mechanical skills that we learn in this program,” Corsette said. “Teamwork and wordless collaboration with the junior Advanced Manufacturing class made this project possible.”
For the project, students used a variety of skills they learn in advanced manufacturing such as following blueprints, being able to pick up where one operation left off to continue the work, making metal parts, doing tolerancing, conducting quality control, doing milling and using equipment such as a surface grinder, lathes and computer numerical control (CNC) machines.
Advanced Manufacturing students have heard positive feedback about the drill vice they created for the Board of Education and deserve credit for the work they put in, Stone said. “They made all the parts and did everything,” Stone said.