Fanuc America gives CNC certification to Chicago college

Fanuc America, a CNC manufacturer based near Chicago, is gaining ground with its Certified CNC Training program launched a little more than a year ago.

In September, the company announced Choice Career College of Des Plaines, Ill., as its newest certified school. The college will be offering students in the Chicago area a computerized manufacturing diploma from their Fanuc CNC program. Upon graduation, this helps students seeking employment with the skills the manufacturing industry desires, taught from certified instructors using a Fanuc CNC-approved curriculum.

“Choice Career College is local to our main CNC office here just outside of the Chicago area and they showed an interest in what we’re doing and we just listened to them to see what their needs were. The program is fairly new and this is the first community college in our area that has gone through the prerequisites and has become qualified to become Fanuc certified,” Fanuc education program manager Dean Steadman says.

“Our goal with the program is to address the skilled staff and lack of pipeline of skilled workers. We received a lot of feedback from our customers in our industry that they can’t find skilled workers to work on their machines in their factories, so it’s really important to address that.”

Fanuc offers a platform control that is used with about 65 percent of the world’s CNC machines, he adds.

“We have another school certified in North Carolina and are currently working with 12 other schools throughout the country that will hopefully be certified in the next six to 12 months.”

The program is open to any high school or college that offers any type of manufacturing program and uses CNC. It is also designed for a school that has no program in place and is looking to put one together. The one criterion is that the school’s instructor must attend a four-day training course at Fanuc’s headquarters.

Students can complete the program in four months, which focuses on mathematics, blueprint reading, machine processes, measuring, CNC setup and G-code applications. They are taught CNC programming by using Fanuc’s NCGuide simulation software.

William Jones, CNC program director at Choice Career College, says the program answers the demand from the manufacturing industry for skilled operators and programmers.

“This will set graduates up for success in their manufacturing career to effectively read and interpret blueprints, develop the required process for the blueprint, determine machine coordinate values, develop CNC code, test the NC programs, quality-control the part and implement the part into production,” Jones says.

Contact: Fanuc America Corp. Tel: 888-326-8287. www.fanucamerica.com

This article originally appeared in the November 2014 issue.