2nd Year Apprentice labs

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ZSmith

Member
Location
St. Louis
Occupation
Education Director
I'm the director of my company's education center and I am looking for ideas for worthwhile labs for second year apprentices. Any and all ideas/suggestions are welcome!
Thank you in advance.
 

petersonra

Senior Member
Location
Northern illinois
Occupation
engineer
what does a second year apprentice need to know that a lab would be helpful to learn?

I wish someone would teach apprentices to read normal electrical control schematics.
 

ZSmith

Member
Location
St. Louis
Occupation
Education Director
Thank you for the reply! I am still searching for the answer to your question! That's what I'm trying to define so I can make our labs useful. I'd like to know what skills are expected of a second year apprentice.
And I will look into your idea, thanks!
-Zach
 

HEYDOG

Senior Member
Thank you for the reply! I am still searching for the answer to your question! That's what I'm trying to define so I can make our labs useful. I'd like to know what skills are expected of a second year apprentice.
And I will look into your idea, thanks!
-Zach
What kind of facility or business is this training for?
 

HEYDOG

Senior Member
We are an electrical contractor and apprentices are earning OJT hours as well as classroom hours.
As an Electrical Contractor what kind of installations and troubleshooting would you expect them to know how to do As second year apprentices? You need to teach the National Electrical Code and Safety along with the hands on stuff!
 

LarryFine

Master Electrician Electric Contractor Richmond VA
Location
Henrico County, VA
Occupation
Electrical Contractor
In the lab, teach them electrical theory, electrical math, and switching.

In the field, teach them how to use tools and how to use the hardware.

Troubleshooting is best learned with experience.
 

Ken_S

Senior Member
Location
NJ
Occupation
Electrician
what does a second year apprentice need to know that a lab would be helpful to learn?

I wish someone would teach apprentices to read normal electrical control schematics.
I've had this very discussion with the local vocational school, I was told no one does that work in our area...
 

ZSmith

Member
Location
St. Louis
Occupation
Education Director
As an Electrical Contractor what kind of installations and troubleshooting would you expect them to know how to do As second year apprentices? You need to teach the National Electrical Code and Safety along with the hands on stuff!
Thanks! We follow the Mike Holt curriculum to fulfill our RTI hours. We do lab nights every six weeks, so we are looking for quality labs to challenge apprentices and teach new skills.
 

ZSmith

Member
Location
St. Louis
Occupation
Education Director
In the lab, teach them electrical theory, electrical math, and switching.

In the field, teach them how to use tools and how to use the hardware.

Troubleshooting is best learned with experience.
Thank you for the reply! What we are specifically looking for are topics for lab nights that we run every six weeks. We are solid on RTI hours and OJT hours (we follow the Mike Holt curriculum for RTI hours, and job site work covers OJT requirements). Our lab nights are additionally scheduled to provide more hands-on training.
 

Ken_S

Senior Member
Location
NJ
Occupation
Electrician
The school I went through the second year was geared towards the commercial side of things.
I would think introducing them to conduit bending would be a good lab
Also talk to the field people to see if they have input on topics that could covered. There's a lot of technology out there, you could likely develop good labs on that stuff that could also be applied to the rest of your work force
 

LarryFine

Master Electrician Electric Contractor Richmond VA
Location
Henrico County, VA
Occupation
Electrical Contractor
Something specific to teach: How to strip wires and make good-quality electrical joints and connections with various combinations of conductor types and sizes.
 

kwired

Electron manager
Location
NE Nebraska
Just who will teach them? IME, very few field electricians are any good at troubleshooting.
Even with my experience, I still learn new things when troubleshooting. A new problem I never encountered before comes up now and then.

Only so much you can do in a lab in simulating break downs when there is so many things that can break down.

I also can't tell you how many motor driven load problems I have been asked to solve that ended up being driven load problems and not electrical problems. The fact a protective device shuts the operation down makes it an "electricians problem" though, so you have to prove why the motor is overloaded.
 

ZSmith

Member
Location
St. Louis
Occupation
Education Director
Just who will teach them? IME, very few field electricians are any good at troubleshooting.

The school I went through the second year was geared towards the commercial side of things.
I would think introducing them to conduit bending would be a good lab
Also talk to the field people to see if they have input on topics that could covered. There's a lot of technology out there, you could likely develop good labs on that stuff that could also be applied to the rest of your work force
I appreciate it! We are doing a conduit bending lab. And yes we are wanting to open labs up to the entire company soon!
 

ZSmith

Member
Location
St. Louis
Occupation
Education Director
Even with my experience, I still learn new things when troubleshooting. A new problem I never encountered before comes up now and then.

Only so much you can do in a lab in simulating break downs when there is so many things that can break down.

I also can't tell you how many motor driven load problems I have been asked to solve that ended up being driven load problems and not electrical problems. The fact a protective device shuts the operation down makes it an "electricians problem" though, so you have to prove why the motor is overloaded.
Thanks! We are trying to develop a troubleshooting lab...
 

junkhound

Senior Member
Location
Renton, WA
Occupation
EE, power electronics specialty
Real time arc flash and circuit breaker time to trip demonstrations, with appropriate safety in place of course.

Demo of wire fusing and how to destroy a screwdriver.

I' d even let students trip a 30 A breaker with an old screwdriver. Face shield and hearing protection of course, possibly even gloves if very safety conscious. o_O
 

junkhound

Senior Member
Location
Renton, WA
Occupation
EE, power electronics specialty
Thanks! We are trying to develop a troubleshooting lab...
OK, for trouble shooting: Obviously, circuits setup with open neutrals, bad CTs or burden resistors, white wire turned brown on 3 pahse with harmonics, ghost voltage setups, etc, etc.....

The group here can likely send you their favorite trouble shooting horror story.
For 60 Hz, my favorite is tripping a QO 20A branch circuit breaker while simultaneously tripping a 3 phase 400A breaker due to an office worker plugging in a laptop power supply - lab exercise: how and why did that happen, what is the fix?
 

ZSmith

Member
Location
St. Louis
Occupation
Education Director
Real time arc flash and circuit breaker time to trip demonstrations, with appropriate safety in place of course.

Demo of wire fusing and how to destroy a screwdriver.

I' d even let students trip a 30 A breaker with an old screwdriver. Face shield and hearing protection of course, possibly even gloves if very safety conscious. o_O
Appreciate the ideas!
 
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