Improving the CNC and CAM-CAD Competencies in accordance with the needs of the industry at CNC vertical processing centres Erasmus Project

Project Title

Improving the CNC and CAM-CAD Competencies in accordance with the needs of the industry at CNC vertical processing centres

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development); New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

It is a fact that machinery students graduate from vocational and technical education institutions do not have the quality to meet the needs of the industry. Students graduating from these institutions are far behind the expectations of the industry and extremely unequipped. However, we have stated in our application document that CNC CAD-CAM applications in VQA (Vocational Qualifications Authority) and national qualification system do not have holistic competence.

Today, there are two main branches in the machining departments of vocational and technical schools. These are the CNC (Computer Numerical Control) department that trains CNC operators and computer-aided machine drafting department that graduates students to design machine parts to be produced. Therefore, students from the CNC department graduate as CNC operators, and students from computer-aided machine drafting departments graduate as machine painters who can design the parts to be produced. It is known that the communication between these two departments in vocational education institutions is extremely weak.

Since the students at these institutions are far from meeting the needs of the industry, this is the main problem of the sector we have been in for years.

Today, in the sector, especially in medium-sized enterprises, these two departments are intertwined and are handled holistically. Hence, a qualified intermediate staff has a good command of both these two areas and CAM applications showing toolpaths.

There is no serious cooperation in this regard in vocational technical schools. In addition, the said schools are not able to respond to the needs of the industry even in the fields they provide education. This is the determination of both VET schools and representatives in the machinery sector.

For a qualified intermediate staff to produce a machine part, it is a must to know;
1- A CAD program to design,
2- A CAM program that shows the toolpaths to be produced on the CNC machine,
3- To produce the part on the bench, it is necessary to know how to operate the CNC.

It is not possible for a personnel who does not have a command of one of these three applications to be qualified. Even the best of the students graduated from vocational education institutions can handle only one of these applications.

It is the basic determination of all the visited enterprises that there are serious developments in the field of industry and technology in the 21st century, but VTE institutions lag far behind these developments. It is a well-known fact that Vocational Technical Schools guide a small part of the students to the industry and many students shift to different sectors. And this is a serious waste of labor, time and workforce.

These graduates become the cheap labor force of the industry who cannot respond to the requirements of the industry but are forced to work to meet the industry’s employment needs, causing these graduates to be kept unemployed in their own fields due to professional inadequacy and lack of self-confidence. This situation leads them to experience trauma in the social life. Hence, many of these graduates shift to occupations outside their professional practice.

Our main goal is to bring these three aforesaid practices together to contribute to the institutions and train qualified intermediate staff.

Our aim was to break the perception that students graduated from VET schools are ‘unqualified intermediate staff’ and instead to showcase that these students are ‘qualified intermediate staff’, while increasing the quality of these students.

To meet the needs, we created ‘CNC CAD-CAM’ products consisting of 3 modules with a 160-hour program. With this project, we aimed to develop the skills of students who lack sufficient competencies for qualified intermediate staff to meet the needs of the sector.

With our project results;
1- We created a European CNC CAD-CAM synthesis report,
2- We created a CNC CAD-CAM module booklet and 120 training videos,
3- We developed a methodology for evaluating the flow of informal and non-formal learning achievements in ECVET modular education systems in vocational education,
4- We created an ECVET platform that evaluates new competencies,
5. We prepared blended web-based training materials for CNC CAD-CAM training.

As a result of all these intellectual output activities, we created our e-learning CNC CAD-CAM ECVET platform https://www.learningcnccadcam.com/. As of now, 242 participating students are actively receiving online CNC CAD-CAM training on the platform.

We have met the basic needs of our project by creating an online education platform that will contribute to the knowledge of especially senior and graduate students before they work in the industry. Realizing these needs has been the main goal of our project.

The target audience of the project is all students graduated from VET institutions in the EU and individuals wishing to take part in this profession in the industry.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 239544 Eur

Project Coordinator

Basaksehir Mesleki Egitim Merkezi & Country: TR

Project Partners

• ASOCIACION DE INVESTIGACION DE LA INDUSTRIA DEL JUGUETE CONEXAS Y AFINES
• Colegiul Tehnic Mihail Sturdza
• TEKYAZ TEKNOLOJIK YAZILIMLAR VE MAKINA TICARET A.S.
• OZEL IKITELLI OSB MESLEKI VE TEKNIK ANADOLU LISESI
• Tehnicka skola Sisak
• EureCons Förderagentur GmbH
• Balkanska Agenciya za Ustoychivo Razvitie