Iron Range Miners' Expo Tool & Equipment Showcase

The Iron Range Miners' Expo Tool & Equipment Showcase is being held this Thursday and Friday at the Minnesota Discovery Center in Chisholm, MN. There will be an Iron Range Engineering booth held there along with many other companies that are key players in the mining industry. The students will be taking part in this event by actually being behind the booth and giving their story. Out of the 14 students participating, two student groups will take two hour shifts throughout the day and will answer any questions attendees of the conference may have.  This is a great chance for the students to tell their story and to represent their school in the public! The students also have the opportunity to walk around the event, allowing valuable connections to be made with other exhibitors and to learn more about the mining industry.

IRE Attributes

IRE students have created the list of attributes. The reason for these attributes is to have a constant reminder of where we want to drive towards at graduation and to think about how each of the activities undertaken on a daily basis contribute to developing the attributes. Below are these attributes as well as definitions developed by students:

IRE Students are:

Motivated

• Ambitious
• Determined
• Has vision
• Is Driven
• Innovative

Team Oriented

• Responsible
• Communicative
• Flexible
• Organized
• Timely

Self-directed

• Organized
• Knows when to ask for help and when to solve problem on own
• Has follow through
• Time manager

Excellent Communicator

• Articulate
• Uses proper grammar
• Concise
• Good listener
• Willing to share thoughts and ideas
• Uses eye contact

Reflective Practitioner

• Identify Learning Approach
• Monitor Learning
• Evaluate Quality of Learning
• Improve Learning
• Document all of the above processes

Independent, Advanced Learners

• Motivated
• Resourceful
• Invested
• Reflective
• Adaptable
• Persistent

Professional

• Engaged in work
• High quality work
• Dedicated
• Prompt
• Respectful
• Good communicator
• Ethical

Prepared

• Practices presentations 
• Always has pen and paper
• Organized
• Uses to do lists
• Comes with questions
• "10 minutes early is on time"

Curious/Innovative/Creative

• Explore and generate possible solutions
• Stays up to date on contemporary issue
• Constantly improves self
• Thinks outside the box
• Involved in the arts

Helping out Hibbing Community and Technical College

Starting on Thursday (7-26) the IRE Interns have been helping out with moving the equipment and classroom supplies for the customized training program, at the Hibbing Community and Technical College. On Thursday we showed-up at 8:00am and started moving the equipment from the room that the two week course was previously held to a room on the other side of the building for temporary storage.

Figure 1— Birds eye view

Figure 2— Original room before and after 

Figure 3— equipment in temporary storage

Then on Friday we painted the walls of three of the four rooms that the class would be held in,

Figure 4— Painting the walls

and on Monday we painted the walls of the fourth room and about half of the floor in the smallest room to test the paint and see what it would look like when it dried. Then on Tuesday two of us went to paint the rest of the floors, which is what we thought would be the last thing that we would be doing in regards to this project, but we found out that they wanted us to strip and wax the floor in the “Classroom” which is the room that we didn’t paint the floors of because they decided to keep the original tile.

Figure 5— painting the floors

Deconstruction at IRE

It has been a noisy month, jackhammers, trucks, and fans have been held at a constant.  My curiosity as to what was happening in the bathrooms was perked when construction put up a sealed wall in the hallway and shut off our air conditioning. So I went in and took some pictures, here are the good ones:

Both bathrooms, the wall between both of the facilities has been removed and the floor has been dug out



I believe this is the drain for the bathroom, though I not really qualified to know exactly what goes through that pipe. Behind the wall is the main hallway to the IRE rooms and faculty office.

Same restroom, just looking at the wall not caught in the first picture.

Art room that IRE is taking over.



Same art room, all the cabinets and lockers have been moved to the center of the room.

Next semester the art rooms will be in use for IRE students, namely for a classroom and study/lounge area, and the bathroom will be completely renovated. Ill keep posting pictures as construction reaches milestones in their project. More to come!

Iron Range Engineering Laboratories

Iron Range Engineering is a getting new laboratory space for students to use. As mentioned in the IRE Groundbreaking Ceremony post, IRE is going to be constructing an electronics lab and a manufacturing lab. Both of these will house brand new equipment available to the students. The electronics lab will have five workbenches with power supplies, function generators, and oscilloscopes. They will also have teaching boards for learning about how the different electric and electronic components work. I feel that the machines for the manufacturing lab are much more impressive however. We will be installing a vertical Computer Numerical Control (CNC) milling machine, a CNC lathe, a manual mill, a laser cutter, and a water jet. We are very fortunate to have benefactors from the region that have assisted in purchasing this equipment for our new building. In particular, the Blandin Foundation, the Minnesota Power Foundation, and the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board have graciously donated hundreds of thousands of dollars. The ability to create our own parts will greatly assist with our semester projects.

IRE Groundbreaking Ceremony

As some of you might have heard, last Friday was a very exciting day for IRE.  It was the groundbreaking ceremony and reception for the new building.  When the government shut down last summer, the grant for the new building was included in the budget.  The new building, along with other renovations, will include: an electronics lab, manufacturing lab, project rooms (with real walls), student life center, and an exercise area.  The students and faculty are looking forward to this building and the improved environment it will bring to IRE.  The students at IRE are very thankful for the improved learning atmosphere and also the huge benefit current and future students will have.  This building started out as a dream and will soon be a reality.  The building will help establish IRE as a program and aid greatly in the unique learning that happens.  There were many people involved in making this happen and without them, it would still be a dream. 

Remember Where You Started

Our journey as engineers thus far started as a new student, just figuring out what engineering is all about.  Most of us came in with goals of inventing the next greatest thing or making the world a better place. The journey then turned into projects, developing friendships with fellow engineering students, and discovering what discipline we would choose. The next couple of years in school were hard, we became bogged down with homework, and life got complicated. Sometimes we may have even wanted to quit, because we forgot why we started in the first place. But there always seems to be a moment when we can revisit our original goals. In those moments we are able to regain control and continue on our path just as determined and confident as when we started.

Revised by Cari Troumbly