Sarah Rosanna Busch

As part of my program at Camosun I had a one week metal shop skills course. Although I had a lot of previous experience with hand tools from working in construction, I had never worked with metal before; I found that I had a natural aptitude for it and really enjoyed this course. This course required the completion of four projects: 1. A bread board chassis that required cutting and bending sheet metal, cutting and filing holes for mounting electronic devices, and fastening with Pop rivets. 2. An IC remover and screw driver that was made from a peice of small steel rod and shaped with a grinder. 3. An audio connector using a chassis punch and sheet metal shears. 4. And an aluminum block and steel plate that were fastened together with metal screws which required hacksawing the two peices of metal to the same length, filing the edges flat and so that they were flush with each other, drilling holes in alignment, cutting threads, and installing a Helicoil insert. We were also required to create a mechanical drawing of a quality that could be given to a machine shop to get results that were exactly to spec (shown below).