MENOMONIE — Alongside the return of students for the fall semester, the University of Wisconsin-Stout is welcoming a gift of new equipment to their campus.
The $3.1 million donation comes from the Ronald and Joyce Wanek Foundation, including a variety of equipment like industrial 3D printers and a variety of manufacturing machines, systems and tools.
“We are extremely grateful for the generosity of the Ronald and Joyce Wanek Foundation and its belief in the distinctiveness, relevance, and need for the polytechnic learning experience that UW-Stout provides,” UW-Stout Chancellor Katherine Frank said in a press release from the university. “This investment in labs and high-demand programs will serve thousands of students prepared to enter the workforce and contribute to the economic vitality of Wisconsin and beyond. The strong relationships with our business and industry partners, like Ashley Furniture Industries, are key to our ability to produce UW-Stout graduates prepared to succeed on day one and throughout their professional career.”
Daniel Freedman, dean of the College of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Management, said the donation comes after a series of discussions about how the foundation was interested in supporting Stout as a result of their ongoing partnership with the Wanek family and their business, Ashley Furniture Industries.
In one area, some of the new equipment is upgrading the CNC machines in their fabrication lab on campus.
“We had similar equipment, but it was all 15 to 20 years old,” Freedman said. “This leaps us forward into really first-class new equipment.
“This is really designed to be able to offer industry-recognized certifications and automation through an organization called SACA (Smart Automation Certification Alliance) that Stout has been collaborating with since it started. All of this equipment is really designed to both support education of our students within Stout, as well as provide the equipment and the training to industry partners and to students.”
From the $3.1 million donation, Stout received several CNC machines for their Fryklund machining lab, including six Haas VF-2 CNC mills, a Haas ST-20Y CNC lathe and Fanuc Robodrill. Four new Universal Cobots (collaborative robots) and six AI-powered Cognex Vision Cameras were also added to the university’s Industrial Robotics and Machine Vision Lab, alongside a variety of industrial 3D printers which were installed in the Additive Manufacturing Lab.
In addition to those equipment, Stout received an Amatrol Smart Factory Enterprise system, which will be used by the university to create a new Automation Training Center.
Expecting to impact over 1,000 students in the next year and more in the future, Freedman said a focus of Stout has always been providing hands-on experience.
“We don’t want to show students and teach on equipment that’s designed just for teaching,” he said, “we want to show them what they’re going to be using when they get out into the industry.
“If you go to Ford, there’ll be a room with 20 or 30 of these [Stratasys 3D printers], all prototyping parts for pre-production models of automobiles. So we don’t just want to teach them the principle of the technique, we really want to show them what they would be using when they get out of industry.”
As the university moves forward with training a future workforce with the hands-on education model of their polytechnic college, Freedman said the donation will also help meet the evolving needs and operations of industry partners.
“I think one of the things that people often don’t understand is that when you buy a new piece of equipment, it’s kind of assumed that you know what you’re going to do with it,” he said. “But the kinds of things that we’re getting with this donation, there are applications that simply haven’t been invented yet.”