Labs donates machines to new advanced manufacturing program

Sandia has donated more than $30,000 in machinery and attachments to Las Positas College in Livermore as it launches a new program aimed at training generations of California students in the once-widespread trade of fabricating new things from raw materials.

According to manufacturing operations engineer Chris Bergh, when Sandia California upgraded two Haas VF-2 computerized numeric controls, staff contacted local schools to find a new home for the retiring milling machines. He learned that Las Positas was gearing up to launch a robust manufacturing program.

“If you’re going to be teaching, you want to teach what’s happening in the real world,” Chris said. “This is going to give them the ability there, especially with such a well-known U.S. brand, to learn this machine and then translate into the real world much easier using those technologies.”

Each of these Haas machines is what is known as a vertical machining center, which works in three axes. The donation of the machines — if new — would exceed $220,000. In addition to the Haas machines, Sandia donated tool holders, power transformers and attachments called trunnions, which allow the machine to become a five-axis mill that can facilitate simultaneous axis milling. The attachments are worth at least $70,000 new.

“Students will learn three-axes machining in the X-Y-Z axes and then learn about A and C axis and B axis later in their careers,” Chris said.

Chris said he was inspired by his manager Brian Cass, who donated machines to Livermore high schools some years ago. In fact, both were part of a recent effort to keep Livermore High School’s machine program active. The donation to help start the program at Las Positas includes another key piece of industrial-grade equipment.

“The Sandia Machine Shop will also donate a coordinate measuring machine able to check parts to tens of thousandths of an inch in measurement,” Chris said. “Inspectors who can use a CMM and other aspects of metrology equipment are a huge need in the manufacturing industry. There are more machinists than there are inspectors, and a good inspector is very important to a machine shop.”

Chris was excited to support Las Positas once he heard about their facility.

“Las Positas is not only one of the best junior colleges in California, it’s one of the best in the nation,” he said. “I think their program is going to be well-received. It’s a great facility, and they have a good curriculum. They’ve thought about the layout and the equipment coming in. I think they’re really motivated to have this work for the school and are seeing strong interest about the courses.”

For Chris, this donation is both an extension of how he views his responsibility as a Sandian and about recapturing something he believes has been lost.

“As a country, we used to be innovators and producers. We don’t repair things anymore. It’s cheaper to buy the widget because it’s completely made than take it out and fix it,” he said. “We were the industrial drivers of the world, and we’ve really gotten away from that, and other countries have seized that. Take an electric vehicle: the motor was made on a CNC machine, and the components in there were made by a machinist. Even the computer gets put together on an automated system that was made by a machinist.”

Now some of those machinists will have been educated at Las Positas College.

“We are very grateful for our partnership with Sandia National Laboratories and their generous donation of CNC machines, which not only provides valuable cutting-edge equipment to our college, but also aligns perfectly with our mission to equip students with the skills needed to succeed in today’s manufacturing industry,” said college president Dyrell Foster.

Chris says he is excited to help students enter a profession he loves, where someone like him gets to manufacture things that protect a nation and usher in the future.

“I have parts in orbit around the world. It’s exciting,” he said. “We see the need in manufacturing, and Las Positas can help train the next generation. Manufacturing helped put a man on the moon and beyond.”