How do you build a better mechanical, industrial or manufacturing engineer? According to Kurt Colvin—PhD professor of industrial engineering at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo—it takes a curriculum balanced between engineering theory and hands-on training with real-world tools found in business, government and manufacturing.

“I started at Cal Poly in January 2000,” he says, “and one of the reasons I wanted to come here was because of the school’s reputation for producing outstanding engineers. Cal Poly is known primarily for for its excellent engineering undergraduate school. The result is that we’re able to place our graduates quickly, especially on the west coast. It is often the case that in west-coast companies one of the mid-level managers will be a Cal Poly alumnus. Our alumni know the quality of our engineers, so they tend to recruit them.”

A Different Philosophy

What makes Cal Poly engineers different from those produced by other schools?

“I think it comes from the history of Cal Poly,” Colvin says. “Cal Poly started out as a very technical hands-on, industrial-art’s type of school. In the beginning the school taught people how to farm and build things, all very practical and hands on. Actually, it’s an interesting history. We evolved from what are called engineering technology programs, with more emphasis on technology and less on math. But a proper engineering program is math-based, so in 1995 the school consolidated the old technology degrees and created manufacturing engineering. We’ve been around for 11 years now as a proper manufacturing engineering program. Since then our engineering students go through a rigorous calculus-based program, but we’re still a hands-on school, too.”

Three Manufacturing Labs

Colvin says the manufacturing engineering department just recently moved into a new building, which shows the school’s emphasis on the importance of the program

“We went from being scattered through several different buildings,” he says. “Now we have a new manufacturing facility with very nice classrooms and three primary labs. The labs are where our students get their hands-on training using advanced manufacturing equipment.”

The Cal Poly manufacturing labs include a manual machining lab, a welding and casting lab and a well-equipped advanced machining lab .

“At Cal Poly we strongly emphasize to our students the need to consider manufacturability of the products and components they design,” Colvin explains. “We teach manufacturing, mechanical and aerospace engineers here, and we make sure they understand the high cost of over-tolerancing parts they design. In our labs, they get a chance to see what that means, because part of their training is building what they design.”

Manual Machining Lab

The Cal Poly manual machining lab is lined with Kent knee mills, all equipped with Acu-Rite CNC controllers.

“Although the knee mills can be CNC driven, we bought them to teach our students what it’s like to crank handles and do traditional manual machining. The Acu-Rite controllers are great because they have huge, easy-to-read DROs on them. At the end of the quarter, the teachers program parts into the controllers and let the students see the real advantages of CNC control. We looked hard at a lot of controllers for the mills, but in the end we selected the Acu-Rite controller because of its ease of use and user-friendly interface.”

Colvin says that the manual machining lab is primarily for first-year students who are simultaneously learning to create solid models in such software as ProEngineer.

“The students also learn some design characteristics like how to put a thread on a shaft, what the dimensions of the thread are, and the right clearances to put a collar over their side. ” he explains. “Students spend about four weeks machining by hand some of the products they’re designing.”

Welding and Casting Lab

The purpose of the welding and casting lab is to give the engineering students a look at a variety of concepts.

“We try to give them an understanding of the various welding and casting processes, so when they begin to design, they can back off and decided on the appropriate process,” says Colvin. “We have a small but advanced-technology foundry, and we have an eighteen-station welding laboratory. In the welding class students go through about fifteen different processes in a quarter. They actually get to try each of the processes. The whole idea is to let them see and feel what it’s like. We let them destructive test and inspect the interior of their welds. They do shielded arc welding, Mig welding, brazing, you name it.”

Advanced Machining Lab

The advanced machining lab is where Cal Poly engineering students are really exposed to CNC machining.

“We have a very well equipped lab here,” Colvin says. “We have two Haas VF2 CNC 3-axis mills, two Haas SL-20 lathes, and we have a small laser machining center, basically for cutting sheet-metal parts. The point is the students get a chance to see and use the kinds of equipment they will find in their factories when they go out into the real world.”

According to Colvin, Haas has been a big help to his engineering program.

“They have been unbelievably helpful to us,” he says. “I believe they put their machines here on consignment. I think we own one of them. Every two years they come in and say, ‘Hey, you probably need a new machine here.’ Then we get a new machine. That’s really great for our students.”

More than other types of engineers, manufacturing engineering studentsuse the advanced machining lab.

“These students learn a variety of CAD/CAM software,” Colvin explains. “They design and machine an injection mold, a process that takes them all the way from design, to producing G-code and finally to running the machines, producing the molds and finally putting the most on an injection molding machine.”

The students are introduced to such software as ProEngineer, ProManufacture, SolidWorks, Mastercam, GibbsCam and others.

“We try to familiarize them with a wide range of software.”

Engineers and More Engineers

The 10,000-acre Cal Poly campus is home to about 18,000 students.
Colvin: “About a third are agricultural students, another third are business and liberal arts and the remaining students are studying one form of engineering or another.”

With the federal government pushing hard to increase the number of math, science and engineering students, Colvin feels that his school is doing more than its share.

“I know that nationwide there’s a shortage of engineering students,” he says, “but here at Cal Poly it’s so competitive, we have many many applications for the few students we let in every year. Life is good in terms of engineering at Cal Poly.”

Why does he think Cal Poly has it so good?

“I believe it’s because we combine a rigorous theoretical approach with a practical hands-on training program,” he says. “Bottom line is we build better engineers.”

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