STEM Funding Brings New Welding Table to Decatur High

Jesslyn Reeves, Executive Director, listens to Paul Allen's explanation of 

how his students use the new welding table.

This year, a generous donation from J. M. Smucker made it possible for Paul Allen, Engineering teacher at Decatur High, to finally bring a welding table to his classroom.

For the past five years, Decatur students have competed in Electrathon, designing and building battery-powered racecars from scratch. Students compete by participating in 60-minute races on various closed-loop courses. Each car is limited to approximately 1000 watt-hour of electricity, so students must design the cars to use energy as efficiently as possible.

To make their high-efficiency designs a reality, they need to be able to achieve precision during manufacturing. A key part of that is making sure that parts stay in place while they’re being welded.

In the past, the team has attached the parts they need to weld to a piece plywood to try and hold them in place. With that setup, they just couldn’t quite get the precision they needed. “When you start to weld, of course it makes a lot of heat. That plywood starts to warp, and suddenly your parts are moving into different positions than you originally clamped them in,” explains Mr. Allen.

The school can buy more jigs to hold parts in place on the table, or students

can manufacture their own pieces to hold items on the table.

In contrast, this welding table provides much more stability during the welding process. Using jigs that mount into the steel table, students can align parts and weld them in place safely and efficiently.

Welding tables like the one in Allen’s classroom are popular in the manufacturing industry, and knowing how to use one is a benefit students can take from their high-school classroom right into future jobs in industry.

Priced at nearly $24,000, tables like this can’t be funded with classroom money alone, but support from donors in our community like J. M. Smucker makes it possible for our students to have the tools they need. The donation of $6,000 meant that the school system could supplement state and federal funding of career tech to afford to invest in high-quality tools for these classes. Ultimately the entire community benefits from students having necessary skills to enter the workforce.

We’re grateful for funding that helps build strong schools for a strong community!