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SCM organizes student tours of high-tech cabinet plants

SCM North America, along with two of its customers in Southern California – Excel Cabinets and Reeves Enterprises – recently provided students from San Jacinto High School’s Industrial Wood Technologies program the opportunity to witness a machine installation and cabinet manufacturing technology in motion.

Over the course of two days, this job shadow experience provided students of the San Jacinto, CA’s woodworking program, an inside look at factory performance optimization; SCM machine research and acquisition; and general day-to-day business operations. SCM North America is a Gold sponsor of the Woodwork Career Alliance of North America.

Day one:  CNC nesting cell installation at Excel Cabinets of Corona, CA. During the installation of SCM’s X200 CNC nesting cell, students, Roman McNabb and Richard Zendejas, along with their instructor, Roy Castillo, were able to see the placement and leveling of the machine. This was followed by the final assembly, calibration, and quality assurance inspection orchestrated by one of SCM’s field service engineers.

Day two:  Factory tour at Reeves Enterprises of La Verne, CA. During the visit at Reeves Enterprises, the students saw the process of building high-end commercial cabinets in a fully automated environment. Brad Reeves, vice president, explained how adjustments including cutting profiles, holes, and grooves are all supported in parametric cabinet design using G-Code programming.  The code is created with Cabinet Vision, a computer automated drafting and manufacturing program to support a fully integrated screen-to-machine operation.

Experiential Education
“My students have a very manual and tactile experience in wood technology and it is in that background that many of the lessons we took part in with SCM were meaningful,” Castillo said. “The scale, efficiency, and workflow of these sorts of facilities gave my students access to what it might be like as a contemporary machine operator. The depth of parametric design and screen-to-machine operations supported our expectations in project planning. We found parallels in our plan of procedure project paperwork and the post processing/G-Code used at Reeves Enterprise;”

About San Jacinto High School’s Industrial Wood Technologies program
The Industrial Wood Technologies program provides students exposure to a wide array of tools and machinery: industrial hand, portable and stationary tools/equipment. Students enrolled in this program engage in an instructional environment where academic and technical preparation will focus on career awareness, career exploration and skill preparation in woodworking teachnologies. The knowledge and skills emphasized in this program include written and manufacturing activities.