USA Trip – Ryan Blackie - April/May 2011

New Zealand Craftsman Training Foundation Scholarship

In 2010 I was very fortunate to be awarded the New Zealand Craftsman Training Foundation overseas travel award. On the 10 April 2011 I left New Zealand on my way to the United States of America for a 6 week trip.

My first stop was Dayton Ohio where I attended the Composites Manufacturing 2011 Conference. It was a 3 day conference with the first day involving two sites visits. The first site visit was to the GE Aviation facility in Evendale Ohio where we were shown around the learning centre and got to see the progression of the jet engine and the use of composites in today’s engines.

The afternoon site visit was to MAG in Hebron, Kentucky. MAG are a cnc machine manufacturer and build a large range of robots and composite automated machinery. It was great to see the technology available and what is capable of being made by this machinery.

The next two days of the conference were presentations held at the Dayton Convention Centre. I found these presentations very interesting and really opened my eyes at what can be done with composites.

I then moved onto Canton Ohio where I visited the Glascraft Production Facility. This company manufactures composite spray guns, resin injection machines etc. I had a tour around the factory and learnt a lot about how these machines are made and developed.

I then moved onto Erie Pennsylvania where I was based for four weeks at the MFG (Molded Fiber Glass) Union City facility. They are a very large composite company with 13 facilities all around the USA and Mexico.

I was exposed to large production scale environment and it was great to see different methods and machinery being used. While based in Erie I was fortunate to be shown around two other large scale compression molding factories, a composite pultrusion factory and another large open molding plant all around the Ohio, Pennsylvania area.

This trip was a great experience and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. I saw a lot of new machinery, technology and massive scale production facilities which I never would have seen in NZ and a lot of new ideas which will be of great use in the future.

Above: a robot from the MFG Factory

Above: The extensive jigging they use to assemble Kenworth truck bonnets

Above: The MFG management team with me being fourth from the left in the back row