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April, 2013:

Training your Metalworking Employees:

Managers of machine shops, fabrication shops and manufacturing companies need to remember to continually train their employees. Sure you want to train them how to do their coworkers job so they can fill in when a coworker is absent or on vacation. But you also want employees to keep up with advances in technology and safety. Employees with well-developed professional skills are more innovative and productive. Investing in the training of your workers improves the quality and productivity of their work. Many eLearning training resources are now listed on the internet.

The Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) organization offers many different webinars through their website Tooling U including:
• Abrasives
• Adhesives
• Automation & Assembly
• CNC Machining
• CNC Controls: GE Fanuc
• CNC Controls: Haas
• CNC Controls: Mazak
• Coatings
• Composites
• Design & Engineering
• Electrical Systems
• Fasteners
• Hydraulics & Pneumatics
• Inspection
• Lean Manufacturing
• Machinery Rigging
• Management
• Manual Machining
• Materials
• Mechanical Systems
• Metal Cutting
• Motor Controls
• PLC Programming
• Press Braking
• Process Technologies
• Quality control & Testing
• Robotics
• Safety
• Shop Essentials
• Soldering
• Stamping
• Supervisor Essentials
• Welding
• Workholding

Most classes are available in english and spanish and can lead to SME certifications in fields of concentration. The SME is also pushing a new initiative aimed at veterans called Training Returning Warriors.

The Precision Metalforming Association (PMA) has a nice library of training seminars available on their website to help those in the metal stamping industry:
• Die Construction for Ease of Maintenance
• Building Dies with Maintenance in Mind
• Tool Material & Coating
• Tool and Die Material Considerations
• Achieving and Sustaining Profitability
• Methodology for Estimating Dies
• Tool Steel: Properties and Performance
• Computer Aided Design Tools
• Designing & Building for High Strength Steels
• Computer Applications for Estimating
• Die Planning, Quoting and Sourcing
• Die Types, Uses and Terminology
• Estimating and Quoting Dies
• Developing Die Concepts and Estimating Cost
• Sourcing Industrial Business
• Current OSHA Machine Enforcement Priorities
• Tonnage Monitoring to Increase Die Life
• Integrated Electronic Systems
• Sensor Applications for Die Protection
• Die Protection Clinic
• Short-run Planning and Understanding Costs
• Spinning/Hydroforming for Prototypes and Samples

If you prefer the old fashioned clssroom, the PMA also offers seminars at their Ohio facility or at your facility. The one or two day seminars focus on sheet metal forming and stamping:
• Computer Simulation of Sheetmetal Forming
• Designing & Building Dies for High-Strength Steel Stampings
• Higher Strength Sheet Steels – Solving the Problems
• Increasing Productivity... Solving the Problems
• Making Flat Rolled Flat – So it Stays that Way
• Safety in the Pressroom
• Sheetmetal Forming — Understanding the Properties
• Successful Die Planning, Quoting and Sourcing
• Troubleshooting Formability Problems
• Best Practices in Sheetmetal Forming
• Designing & Building Metal Stamping Dies
• Forming Difficult Stampings with Better Consistency

Looking for an on-line resource that is free? First you should check out the many educational HOW TO USE MACHINE TOOLS webpages we offer on AmericanMachineTools.com. Lastly you and your employees can watch Youtube videos of others doing work with some of the same machines you have at your company.

eLearning is a great way to provide the right combination of formal and informal learning. Instead of having employees spend several days at an expensive, offsite facility, webinars are available in short formats to allow employees to educate themselves when it is convenient.

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