After graduating from Marshfield High School in Marshfield, Wisconsin, Luke Behling worked at local machine shops where he was introduced to Milltronics CNC machines and learned the ways of CNC machining. Inspired to make an impact on his community, Behling returned to Marshfield High to teach young people about technology and manufacturing.
Today, Behling is pushing Marshfield High’s metalworking program forward. The high school has taught metalworking since the 1960s, but thanks to Behling’s efforts, students are now learning advanced manufacturing on modern CNC machines.
“So we worked with a couple local companies,” explained Behling. “We worked with some curriculum funding and some grant money. We were able to purchase a Milltronics CNC mill (VM2515) and lathe (SL6-II), and we brought them in here, and we incorporated them into our class.”
Why Milltronics? Behling cited several factors, including his own familiarity with the machines and Milltronics’ “usability.”
“I learned on Milltronics, and I do know that the controllers are overall pretty user friendly, so it’s a good machine for students to get their hands on. They can pick up the controller relatively easily, so that’s why we thought it would be a really good fit for us.”
Behling also noted that area shops insisted the school teach students on Milltronics machines.
“We talked to them, got their input on this, and they were pushing us towards Milltronics.”
With local shops like Innovative Machine Specialists already using Milltronics, teaching students on the same brand of machine gives them a leg up when they graduate.
“They’re going to have the basic skills that they need to maybe walk into a machine shop and get a youth apprenticeship job, or a job there, or go to technical college for machining,” said Behling.
The instructor estimated that during the course of the school year, over 200 students will interact with the Milltronics CNC equipment in one way or another. He said his main goal is to make the curriculum as engaging as possible so that it sparks an interest within his students. Behling highlighted that the most valuable feature when introducing teenagers to CNC machining is Milltronics’ conversational programming.
“That makes it pretty easy for a student to come in with maybe just a couple days of going through the conversational programming,” explained Behling. “They can be up and doing very simple toolpaths. So that was definitely one of the very positive things with getting Milltronics versus having students try to write manual code. I think I would lose a lot of high school students very fast if we were writing manual code.”
Behling expressed that perhaps the most rewarding aspect of his job is watching his students take what they learned in class and build a career out of it.
“Out of our six (advanced manufacturing) students last year, one of them ended up going to Mid-State (Technical College) for machining. Currently in class we have a student that’s interviewing at Innovative Machine Specialists to do a youth apprenticeship there, so that’s really awesome. We have kids that are going directly out into industry and into the technical colleges from this class based off the equipment that they’re using in here.”
Behling is thankful for the strong relationships he’s built with Milltronics, his local Milltronics distributor Concept Machine Tool, and Innovative Machine Specialists. He intends to continue growing the program to better prepare the next generation of machinists, and recommends Milltronics to any school looking to build a CNC machining program of their own.
“I think definitely going the Milltronics route would be a very good option just because of the usability.”
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