SCM promotes learning by doing

Earlier this year, woodworking machinery manufacturer SCM North America, along with two Southern California cabinetry companies, hosted a job shadow program for a local high school to give its students an in-person tutorial on modern cabinet-building technology.

Over a two-day period, the students from the Industrial Wood Technologies program at San Jacinto High School visited Excel Cabinets in Corona, Calif. and Reeves Enterprises in La Verne, Calif., where they got an inside look into factory performance optimization, SCM machine research and acquisition, and general day-to-day business operations. School instructor Roy Castillo says it was an invaluable in-person experience for his students.

“My students have a very manual and tactile experience in wood technology, and it is in that background that many of the lessons we took part in with SCM were meaningful,” says Castillo.

The first day covered CNC nesting cell installation at Excel Cabinets. Students were able to see the placement and leveling of SCM’s X200, followed by the final assembly, calibration, and quality assurance inspection orchestrated by one of SCM’s field service engineers.

The second day included a factory tour at Reeves Enterprises where the students saw the process of building high-end commercial cabinets in a fully automated environment.

“The scale, efficiency, and workflow of these sorts of facilities gave my students access to what it might be like as a contemporary machine operator. The depth of parametric design and Screen-To-Machine operations supported our expectations in project planning. We found parallels in our plan of procedure project paperwork and the post processing/G-code used at Reeves Enterprises,” says Castillo.

For more, visit www.scmgroup.com. 

This article originally appeared in the May 2020 issue.