Mt. Pleasant manufacturer's apprentices keep winning manufacturing competition

Jacob Koelsch knows his way around a machining blueprint.

The 23-year-old North Huntingdon native is a fourth-year apprentice at Penn State Tool & Die, and for the second consecutive year, Koelsch has taken the top spot in the MSC Industrial Supply & National Tooling & Machining Association Pittsburgh Chapter’s annual Apprenticeship Competition.

Koelsch recently wrapped up his fourth apprentice year at the Mt. Pleasant manufacturing business.

“I really enjoy working there,” he said. “I’m working to get better every day and trying to get my name out there.”

The competition brings in apprentices from several regional machine shops, where they are given blueprints for a project they’ve never seen before.

On top of that, they can’t draw on much of their experience, because what they are asked to machine is not a real part in any functional sense.

“It’s a somewhat complex aluminum part with a bunch of different shapes and some holes,” Koelsch said. “It’s more to prove that you have the skills to machine these certain things, and it tests your fundamentals when it comes to blueprint reading. They try to combine a lot of the basic skills into this one complex part.”

Each competitor was given four hours per part to produce as many of the part features as possible. A point system based on knowledge, skill and efficiency determined the winner.

Koelsch’s back-to-back wins for Best Metal-Working Apprentice made it three years in a row that someone from Penn State Tool & Die has won the competition. Not only that, but second place also went to a Penn State fourth-year apprentice, Hunter Orischak.

Long before he stepped through the doors at Central Westmoreland Career & Technology Center, Koelsch had a good idea of what he wanted to do for a career.

“My pap and great uncles were all machinists,” he said. “I got a job at a fabrication machine shop during the summer when I was in high school — I was doing basic shop work, but I was surrounding myself with it and took a real interest in it.”

Koelsch was among a group of 34 apprentices to graduate from the NTMA’s four-year training program, through which they earned their journeyman’s certification through the state Department of Labor & Industry’s Pennsylvania Apprenticeship & Training Council.

The NTMA’s Pittsburgh Chapter has been operating its apprenticeship program since 1976.