A lot of things about American manufacturing have changed since its heyday in the mid-20th-century.
The computer numerical control machining tools at College of the Canyons’ interim Advanced Technology Center are testament enough to that. In the ATC’s automated lab, robot arms in giant glass boxes – or moving freely along a far wall – are the hands of the technician.
“By the time you got to 40, 50 years old, you had carpal tunnel syndrome, you had knee problems, you had hip problems, sometimes you had back problems,” said Harriet Happel, dean of career education at COC. “Now the art is in the programming, right?”
At COC’s interim ATC open house event Thursday, local industry leaders, college employees and other curious Santa Clarita residents had the chance to tour the ATC’s machinery and learn about how students use that equipment to become versed in in-demand manufacturing skills.
Jasmine Ruys, the college’s interim superintendent-president, said the college had put together the interim ATC while the college was working with Intertex to build a permanent ATC off-campus on Valley Center Drive.
“Back in 2018, I want to say, is when we really started to look at our manufacturing areas — where was the future headed in this work that we wanted to do for our students to be able to get trained up,” Ruys said. “We had worked with (the National Coalition of Advanced Technology Centers) to kind of see what is the landscape that is going to flourish here in Santa Clarita.”
While the Intertex deal fell through in 2024, the college is in the midst of working to put a permanent ATC on its Valencia campus, with ATC plans currently being reviewed by the Division of the State Architect.
For now, the interim ATC, about a 5-mile drive east of the Valencia campus on Diamond Place, has the ambitious task of training up students who often have literally zero experience with tools, Happel said.
The learning pathway for incoming students can be understood as a loop around the interim ATC’s two main areas, the manual lab and the automated lab. To the right of the manual lab entrance, two extensive sets of basic hand tools – wrenches, screwdrivers – hang from the wall in neat rows.
There they learn the skills essential for manufacturing jobs, from aerospace to assembly.
“(Many incoming students) don’t even know the difference between a flat head and a Phillips screwdriver. So we start with the basics,” Happel said.
After that, students learn about geometric dimensioning and tolerancing, a symbolic language used for engineering drawing, and metrology, or the study of measurement. Metrology tools and manual mills and lathes, the instruments they’ll first use to machine parts, fill up the rest of the lab.
Happel said the lab has a variety of tools that teach students how to perform quality control on a particular part, and that the college is working on developing the curriculum for a production technician certification – with the goal of offering it to dual-enrolled high school students.
After mastering the manual machines, students graduate to the tools that’ve radically transformed manufacturing, and in Happel’s view, have centered human ingenuity in the field: programmable machines, or computer numeric control.
“This is a great example of how robots help humans to do the human-centered work … the robots are doing the repetitive work that humans were never designed to do in the first place,” Ruys said. “So no, robots are not going to take over the world, but they are going to make our lives better.” At COC’s interim ATC open house event Thursday, local industry leaders, college employees and other curious Santa Clarita residents had the chance to tour the ATC’s machinery and learn about how students use that equipment to become versed in in-demand manufacturing skills.
