SkillsUSA Champs Offer Glimpse Into Woodworking Industry's Future
SkillsUSA Champs Offer Glimpse Into Woodworking Industry's Future

SkillsUSA Champs Offer Glimpse Into Woodworking Industry's FutureThe 2012 winners of the annual SkillsUSA Championships were announced last week. Working against the clock and each other, participants proved their expertise in job skills for occupations such as carpentry, cabinetmaking and technical drafting.

- Cabinet makers

- Carpentry

- Technical drafting

- CNC milling

- CNC turning

- Precision machining

- Automated manufacturing

- Technical math

- Technology principles

- Chapter display

Over 5,600 outstanding career and technical education students joined in the excitement of hands on competition in 94 different trade, technical, and leadership fields.

The 2012 winners of the annual SkillsUSA Championships in Automated Manufacturing Technologies. In addition to carpentry, cabinetmaking and technical drafting, wood industry related fields skills were also tested. These included integrated manufacturing technology fields of computer aided drafting/design (CAD), computer aided manufacturing (CAM), and computer numerical controlled machining (CNC).

Student CAD operators constructed part geometry; the CAM operators generated the tool paths; and the CNC operators set up and machines the part. 

A previous SkillsUSA winner in cabinetmaking, Daniel Berrios, received a $2,500 grant from the Architectural Woodwork Institute Education Foundation to underwrite expenses to compete in the SkillsUSA World Cabinetmaking Competition, July 2-7, 2013 in Germany. Currently a student at Northampton Community College, Berrios won the right to compete in the WorldSkills competition during qualifying trials at the AWFS in 2011.

Have something to say? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.