ITW Heartland has partnered with the Alexandria Area High School’s (AAHS) Center for Advanced Professional Studies (CAPS) program to provide real-life work experience for local students. The CAPS network, which AAHS joined during the summer of 2015, was created to promote “profession-based learning, responsiveness, self-discovery and exploration, professional skills development and an entrepreneurial mindset.” This, according to the official CAPS Network website, http://yourcapsnetwork.org/.
Mark Petersen, Operations Manager for ITW Heartland’s Manufactured Products facility, appreciates the value of the CAPS network. “This is a unique program, one that I believe fosters a true ‘win-win’ for our community. Not only does it provide local area students with valuable, real-world working experiences, it also allows companies like ours to cultivate connections with a new generation of potential workers.” He added, “Even better, these students are working on some neat and important projects for our business.”
To date, Heartland has engaged a total of 5 students on two separate projects, both focusing on safety improvements. One project involves the production of safer material handling carts designed to move the material to proper working heights, thereby improving worker ergonomics and physical safety. Similarly, the second project eliminates the need for machine operators to position themselves in an unsafe way in order to clean out the waste generated by chip conveyors on Heartland’s horizontal CNC machines.
About Spiroid
The Spiroid & Helicon gearing brands are comprised of a pinion and a face-gear operating in non-intersecting and non-parallel axes – often referred to as ‘skew axis’. Spiroid and Helicon are advantageous in that they broaden gearing design opportunities restricted by the physical limitations of conventional gearing. Spiroid and Helicon represent a powerful design alternative for engineers looking to transmit higher torques, within smaller spaces, at right angles. Spiroid and Helicon: maximum power density in a right angle gearing solution.