Fabrication creations

Students attend Camp FAB workshop at Minot High

By ANDREA JOHNSON, Staff Writer ajohnson@minotdailynews.com
Manufacturing jobs have a bad reputation with kids, said technical education teacher Gabe Rauschenberger. They tend to think of the jobs as not paying very well, being dirty and being only for men.


That bad rep is one of the reasons the Minot Public School District obtained a grant from the national Fabricators and Manufacturers of America association to offer a week-long summer workshop for 12- to 16-year-olds, called Camp FAB, at Minot High School-Central Campus.


A group of boys gathered at a table to make miniature green frogs, the type used as bait, at a plastisol molding station on Tuesday.


“It’s a lot of fun,” said Nick Tickerhoof.


Across the room, at another station, Ashleigh Owens, Parker Scott, and Cera Pignet worked on cutting out the boat hull and cabin of a plastic boat and sanding it using the equipment in the technical education department.


In another room, sisters Amanda Kraft and Annika Kraft assembled electronic parks to make a siren.


“Our mom signed us up for it,” said Annika, an eighth-grader at Nedrose.


Both girls said they like math and science, which was part of the reason they were interested in the camp.


Cera, who will be an eighth-grader at Ramstad, said she’s looking forward to taking the school’s technical education class, which will enable her to get a taste of all the technical education classes that she’ll be able to take in high school.


“The biggest thing we’re trying to do is keep these kids engaged,” said Rauschenberger.


Other stations include vacuum forming, boat forming, CNC milling, vinyl cutting, soldering, plastic welding, package engineering, manufacturing careers and a buoyancy test for the completed boat.


The camp includes field trips to different manufacturing employers around the area. The kids will be touring businesses such as Minot Sash and Door and Sund Manufacturing in Newburg, among others. Businesses have been gracious about making time for the tours, said Rauschenberger. There’s a shortage of people going into manufacturing jobs, so they are interested in showcasing what they do.


Rauschenberger said about a fifth of the 19 kids enrolled in the week-long camp are girls, which is a good sign, given how heavily dominated by males the industry is.


At the end of the week, each of the kids will take home a miniature boat they made themselves of AVL plastic, using the latest manufacturing techniques.