Some Sturgeon Composite students hope to find sweet success at Skills Canada this week with a pair of taffy-making robots.
About 800 high school and post-secondary students from across Alberta are at the Edmonton Expo Centre this May 8-9 for the 32nd annual Skills Canada Alberta provincial competition. The event, which is free and open to the public to watch, aims to promote student interest in the trades by having them complete challenges in 45 trades-related areas, including baking, electronics, and 3D computer animation.
About 22 students from the St. Albert/Sturgeon County region are competing at provincials this week, said Skills Canada Alberta spokesperson Victoria Anderson. Some are making videos or 2D animations, while others are styling hair or carving cabinets. Watching them are some 1,100 students taking part in the Try-A-Trade fair happening alongside the competition. At stake are scholarships, medals, and a chance to compete at the national Skills Canada event in Quebec later this May.
Robo-taffy?
Sturgeon Composite students Xander Puhlmann, David Chatten, and Neil Maddagan were busy bolting the final parts onto their maple-syrup mechas on May 6 in preparation for the Robotics event at Skills.
“We’ve been preparing these robots since January,” Puhlmann said, and they hoped to have them ready for the competition.
The Robotics event asks teams to build and operate remote-controlled and/or autonomous robots to make maple taffy, Puhlmann said. The robots will do so by collecting “sap” (yellow and red balls) from “trees” (vertical pipes) and placing only the red balls (which represent maple syrup) onto “snow” (foam blocks) to make the taffy, all without knocking over obstacles on the playing field. Whichever team makes the most taffy in four minutes wins.
Puhlmann said the team decided to go with two remote-controlled robots for this contest. (Teams can field up to three robots.) One robot will use a claw to pull a dowel out of the trees to release the balls and an Archimedes screw to lift them into a sorter. The second robot will have a forklift to move the foam bricks into position. Once the balls are sorted, the first robot will transfer them to the second one to be dumped onto the bricks.
“There’s a lot of work to get done in four minutes,” Puhlmann said.
Puhlmann, Chatten, and Maddagan said they were keeping their expectations low, as this was their first time at provincials. No matter the outcome, they said preparing for this event had taught them a lot about teamwork and project management.
Also competing at Skills this week is Sam White, who is representing Sturgeon Composite in the Welding competition. He will have 12 hours to create a castle and an abstract crate out of metal and precision welds.
White said he was inspired to try Skills by his brother, who took 4th in welding at provincials several years ago. He’s been practicing his welds for hours every day after school for the last month to prepare for this week’s competition.
“Welding calms me down and helps me think,” he said, adding that he found the sizzle of the metal reassuring.
White said participating in Skills has given him the drive to improve his skills and his mental health, and could lead to a future job welding pipelines. He said he hoped to meet or beat his brother’s performance at provincials this week.
“If I get third, I’ll just wave a medal at him,” he said.
The Skills Canada Alberta provincials wraps up at 6:30 p.m. May 9 with an awards ceremony. Visit skillsalberta.com for details.
