Nineteen students from Ballston Spa Middle School made a field trip to Guyson Corporation’s Saratoga Springs plant on August 4, 2011, as part of their rich week-long “summer camp” experience in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in the school district’s Gateway Academy program.
Can you pick out the future engineers in this group of students?
After a brief introduction to Guyson Corporation and the fundamentals of blasting technology, the students formed three smaller teams to visit the Engineering Department, the Testing Laboratory and the Guyson factory floor, where they saw automated and robotic blasting machinery being built.
One highlight of the visit was the demonstration of a working robotic blast system that is custom-designed for shot peening of industrial gas turbine blade roots. The students also saw Computer-Aided Design tools used by design engineers, CNC machine tools, several types of blasting machines under construction and examples of surface treatments for a selection of aerospace, automotive and medical components.
Dan Dopp, Project Engineering Manager at Guyson Corporation, who hosted the robotic shot peening demonstration, expressed pleasant surprise at the attentiveness of some of the youthful visitors.
“There were some very good questions from each of the teams of young people,” Dopp commented. “I think there might easily have been several future engineers in this Gateway Academy group. For many, the visit to Guyson could be the first exposure to a manufacturing work place, and it is great that the opportunity was provided for them at that age.”
At the end of the visit, the students gathered in the reception area of the main building at Guyson’s 80,000 square foot factory, and each participant received a souvenir Guyson Robotic Blasting T-shirt.
