Experts to take College course to new level
Lecturers in tool design training with the PUM expert Hesell Vink. Picture 1: From left: J.R. Ramalapa, C. Ciedras, L. Carelse (Programme Manager), A. Carlse, H. Vink ( Dutch PUM expert), back from left: C. Prisloo and A.Cyster. Picture 2: CNC students From left: Mawande Gagela, Refilwe Lesomo, Sharon Mouries and Brandon Blanckenberg. Picture 3: From left: Salvino Hendriks and Allen Williams (Tool designing).
Northlink College is proud to announce that it has gone into collaboration with the senior experts of PUM (Vehicle Programme) from the Netherlands to improve the current, industry leading Computer Numerical Control (CNC) course at Northlink College Wingfield Campus.
This three year programme started in 2011 and has seen retired senior industry experts travel to South Africa and the past three visits included a curriculum developer who assisted with benchmarking the existing CNC curriculum to an international standard, software and tool design expert and a plastic injection molding expert. These visits have been both of fact finding and knowledge sharing significance and the programme will be concluded in August 2013 with a final evaluation of the value added benefit for the College. The College believes that with this collaboration, the CNC course will be taken to newer heights and could be one of the top international CNC training courses. Another outcome of this valuable collaboration was the establishment of an Advisory Board in collaboration with industry consisting of staff members from Wingfield and representatives of industry. This board will meet every trimester with the purpose to ensure that our training is what industry requires and that we stay at the cutting edge of training for the Tooling industry specifically, but also for the broader related Mechanical Engineering industry.
Says Louis Carelse, Northlink College Programme Manager: Skills programmes at Wingfield Campus “ We hope that with this project the CNC training will be taken to an international level that will not only improve the quality of education we offer, but will make Northlink College one of the international leaders in CNC training.”
Northlink is currently a leading provider for training of artisans in the CNC industry and as this year, 2013 have been proclaimed the year of the artisan, the College is fortunate to have been able to participate in this project to help skill even more artisans for the industry.
“We will continue to build relationships with both national and international companies in the pursuit of improving the quality of the educational offering we bring,” adds Bradford van Reizig (H.o.D.: Engineering at Wingfield Campus).
Currently Northlink College is training all the Western Cape FET Colleges CNC lecturing staff as well as learners from other institutions such as Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), and Institute of Advanced Tooling (IAT) that is situated at the University of Stellenbosch.