After nearly two years, we're back with a brand-new episode! In this revival, we sit down with advanced manufacturing educators from Michigan, Massachusetts, and rural Mississippi to get a firsthand look at the state of their classrooms and shops. We dive into the challenges of student recruitment, explore their future plans, uncover the hurdles they encounter, and discuss why vocational education is vital to the future of U.S. manufacturing. Don’t miss this insightful conversation about the next generation of skilled workers! 

Speaker Info:

• Chris Donovant - Founder/Instructor - NexTech Academy  
• David Sommerville - Advanced Manufacturing Instructor - Assabet Valley Vocational Technical High School
• Gabriel Kooyers - Advanced Manufacturing Instructor - Van Buren Tech
• Steve Phillips - President/Co-Owner - Phillips Precision, Inc.
• Allan DeLisle – Host/Producer

Delivering Perfect Parts Faster! is a unique podcast series from inside the walls of  manufacturing laboratory - Phillips Precision, Inc. of Boylston, MA - the birthplace of industry changing innovations; Mitee-Bite® Pitbull® Clamp, Inspection Arsenal®, Laser Arsenal® and the M5 Edge Finder™.

 This episode spotlights a humble and talented man who answered the call to start a manufacturing training facility for  underserved youth in rural Mississippi.  Chris Donovant, a retired tool and die maker started Nextech Academy literally from the  ground up with an involved group of students. Listen to the story about how it all started and the positive impact this  project will have on the community and industry. How do you answer the call?

A Quality Inspectors role is multifaceted and stressful trying to keep pace with production, technology advances and required quality standards. It’s an unreasonable expectation that they are also skilled at programming and design of complex inspection fixtures. In the rare case you employ such an inspector – hold on to them! In this podcast we discuss this industry gap and how companies like Carl Zeiss Industrial Metrology help make your CMM’s sing. And, as always we shed some light on education and opportunities in this area of manufacturing.

Speaker Info:

• Doug Fitzgerald – Business Manager - Carl Zeiss Industrial Metrology
• Cathy Phillips – Co-Owner/Business Manager - Phillips Precision, Inc.
• Allan DeLisle – Host/Producer

Delivering Perfect Parts Faster! is a unique podcast series from inside the walls of  a manufacturing laboratory - Phillips Precision, Inc. of Boylston, MA - the birthplace of industry changing innovations; Mitee-Bite® Pitbull® Clamp, Inspection Arsenal®, Laser Arsenal® and the M5 Edge Finder™.

Proprietary software is costly and dispiriting to purchase (and renew), learn, implement and maintain. Alternately, choosing universal, open-source, multi-function software can free up skilled employees to work on much more valuable work.  Quality Inspectors are among some of the most technical and talented in the manufacturing work force and our goal in this podcast is for you to consider freeing up time to spend on fixture designs that will speed inspection. In this episode of Delivering Perfect Parts Faster, you’ll learn about an affordable design platform that Phillips Precision uses for designing production fixtures, our own product design and even inspection fixture design. Listen to Cody Armstrong, Director of Technical Services of PTC and Victor Rinaldi, Product Development Engineer with Phillips Precision as they discuss OnShape as a contemporary multi-function and affordable  choice – from production through to inspection!

Replacing multiple proprietary applications with a universal software, companies realize immeasurable savings in training, maintenance, and lost productivity. In this episode of Delivering Perfect Parts Faster, Nathan Frost of QXsoft introduces CMM Manager and discusses inspectors freeing themselves to focus on more valuable, creative work.

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With the 4th Industrial Revolution just around the corner, you'll need to automate your processes to stay competitive in the rapidly advancing manufacturing space. Standardizing your processes today will position you to automate tomorrow.  Sit in with John Ribic, President of Remco Products Inc, Mark Lightbody - Applications Engineer at Mitee-Bite® and our very own President and Lead Designer - Steve Phillips. We discuss work holding on the shop floor and the concept of accurate, repeatable and modular fixturing systems that are necessary for agile robotic machine tending. 

There are seemingly two worlds of manufacturing work holding - inspection and production.  As manufacturers ourselves and inventors of Mitee-Bite® Pitbull® Clamp, we decided to dip our toes in the water of shop floor work holding for a couple of episodes.  Listen and learn from some seasoned manufacturing professionals about cost reductions, specialty setups and solutions. This episode features Mitchell Kirby - Vice President of Manufacturing at Riten Industries, Brian Butler - Solutions Engineer at Pratt Burnerd America and our very own Steve Phillips, President of Phillips Precision and inventor of Pitbull® Clamp. Whether in the metrology department or on the shop floor, we're here to help you Deliver Perfect Parts Faster!

Manufacturing industry job titles are diverse! We're not all machinists, operators, engineers and programmers.  Some of us joined the industry to make a difference in how manufacturers best connect with their customers.  In this episode of of Delivering Perfect Parts Faster, I delve into the world of marketing with Shannon Gregor, Marketing Specialist at Made To Measure. Learn what methods are going out of style and which new practices are taking hold. 

Siri and Alexa are popular personal assistants. Now the same technology is available at your machine controls!  In this episode of Delivering Perfect Parts Faster we sit down with Jerry Rex, Chief Revenue Officer of iTSpeex as he introduces us to Athena, the first digital assistant to control machines on the shop floor. 

Athena takes us closer to autonomous, next gen manufacturing.

Listen to Delivering Perfect Parts Faster!

Listen to Doug Fitzgerald, Business Manager of Carl Zeiss Metrology Services, for a simple explanation of an advanced technology.  Industrial Computed Tomography (CT) Scanning (part x-rays) is helping manufacturers around the world Deliver Perfect Parts Faster by performing highly accurate, non-destructive inspection of complex parts - even assemblies of varied materials!