Junior Cheyenne Dinsmore takes a break from overseeing CNC machines in Brown County High School’s Eagle Manufacturing to speak with a visitor. Wearing safety glasses and an Eagle Manufacturing blue polo shirt, she explains what her position as manufacturing production manager entails.
“Basically, I make sure that everything is running smoothly, that everyone has a job,” she said.
Dinsmore also oversees Eagle Manufacturing’s engineering department.
The student-run manufacturing business in Brown County High School began in the fall of 2018. It trains students in administration, engineering design, CNC machining and graphics/promotional materials.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]For the 2019 calendar year, Eagle Manufacturing earned $44,000 in revenue.
“We spent a lot of money building out our inventory of materials and tools, updating equipment and things like that, so our profit wasn’t a tremendous amount, but we were profitable for the first year. We’re pretty pleased,” said Eagle Manufacturing adviser Chris Townsend.
“We’re on track to do a lot better this year potentially.”
In the summer of 2018, Brown County Schools received a $500,000 grant from the ROI Ready Schools Initiative, and about $21,500 of that money was set aside to help fund Eagle Manufacturing.
Townsend, an engineering and technology teacher, and industrial technology teacher Dean Keefauver both serve as advisers.
Over the summer, 22 students worked a paid internship through Conexus at Eagle Manufacturing for three weeks in June and three weeks in July. Dinsmore began working for Eagle Manufacturing through that internship.
“I love it. It’s like a real environment. That’s what I love about it, because it’s not just school. You’re learning and working at the same time. You work with customers every day. It’s like the real-world experience,” she said.
“I kind of want to go into engineering in college, in my career choice, so learning how to run to the CNC machines and the software that we’re using is a great experience for us.”
Students learn valuable skills through working with Eagle Manufacturing. “Definitely working with people,” Dinsmore said.
“You have to have a really good people skills with your co-workers and also with the customers that you deal with.”
Along with CNC machines, students also learn how to use 3D printers in the machine product area.
Since the opening of Eagle Manufacturing, the graphics department’s business has continued to grow, so much that it expanded to its own area down the hall from the machine product area.
“People don’t know about CNC machines. People don’t know that we can literally take a chunk of metal and turn it into something you can use. … I wish we had more customers,” Dinsmore said.
“There’s not people beating down your door to get machine parts because a lot of the cases, they don’t know what are our capabilities are. That’s what we’re working on now is getting that out,” Townsend said.
But still, the students keep busy.
Recently, Eagle Manufacturing students completed a job using the CNC Plasma machine to make hinge parts for a hot rod.
“He (the customer) brought in a 1920s hinge from a Chevy hinge that is hard to find, and we were able to reverse-engineer that, cut some of the parts for him. He’s fabricating the rest of it,” Townsend said.
Last week, Dinsmore, along with juniors Jake Huddleston and Dalton Platt, were using a CNC machine to make a tool arm attachment for a robot that a man in Ohio is building.
“All of us were super excited when we found out we were doing it,” Dinsmore said.
Continuing to grow
If you ask Townsend how business has been going since the doors opened his answer is: Busy.
The biggest change is the addition of a new management software from ProShop out of Washington state. Eagle Manufacturing has also developed a partnership with ProShop. “That manages everything from our estimates and quoting all the way through to shipping, invoicing and everything in between, all the steps to make the products,” Townsend of the new management software.
The software is “just like (what) an aerospace machine shop would use,” Townsend said.
“It’s made for machine shops, but we’re adapting it for the graphics side of our business, too.”
The room where graphics was originally housed is now exclusively for administration and engineering. “We ran out of space quick,” Townsend said.
Eagle Manufacturing has a reach outside of Indiana with ProShop being one of their customers.
“We make their apparel, and then we just shipped 250 aluminum machine-engraved items that they use for giveaways at conferences,” Townsend said.
Eagle Manufacturing also does a lot of work for the school district. “We can be a little more adaptive to their needs, because we’re here and they can just come to talk to us, versus working with someone two cities away or something,” Townsend said.
Their reach also extends to local organizations, like BETA, and local businesses including the Clay Purl.
“We’re expanding for sure. We’ve worked with some companies in Indianapolis as well. We’ve got a pretty decent reach,” Townsend said.
Graphics work is the most popular service Eagle Manufacturing offers, “the reason being is that everybody needs graphics. Everybody needs T-shirts, banners and engraved tumblers, promotional items,” Townsend said.
With election season in full swing, Eagle Manufacturing keeps busy with orders from candidates, too. “We actually just had an order for 120 stickers to modify old political signs so they didn’t have to purchase new ones,” Townsend said.
Most of the advertising for Eagle Manufacturing has been done through open houses and word of mouth, “which is fantastic and intentional, because we anticipate when we start doing some direct marketing, especially with local businesses, that we’re going to get a high volume of orders out of that. We want to make sure we can handle that,” Townsend said.
The new management software will help the business to run more efficiently, especially if Eagle Manufacturing expands to having multiple shifts next school year. Currently, 24 juniors and seniors meet for one period a day to work on orders. To earn a spot in Eagle Manufacturing, students go through an in-person interview and must submit a resume.
Townsend interviewed 22 potential Eagle Manufacturing employees for next school year. Students earn class credit for working in Eagle Manufacturing. When the business is profitable enough, the plan is to do profit sharing with the students.
‘Like a real life business’
Platt also began working with Eagle Manufacturing through the summer internship.
“I like computers and the programming part, so that’s what I’m going to start doing next year,” he said.
“I feel like I’m actually in a workplace, and it’s something I can do that’s not connected to schoolwork. We learn a lot of new stuff that can actually help me in an actual, real-world environment.”
Huddleston has also been working in Eagle Manufacturing since the summer. He decided to apply because he wanted experience with engineering, CNC machines and how a manufacturing business is operated. Now, he is considering going to Vincennes University after graduation to get his CNC certification.
Junior AJ Weis was using the CNC router machine to drill holes into multiple squares made of wood for an order.
“i made a program (on the computer). It’s just holes into a square. We made this board that holds it. I can keep loading more on and it will be the same exact spot each time. I take it off and make sure the holes are lined up,” Weis said.
Learning how to program the CNC machines is one skill Weis said he has gained by working at Eagle Manufacturing.
“It’s different than most classes. Instead of learning about manufacturing, you actually get to do it. It’s more like a real-life business,” he said.
Senior Tanner Bowman was in the shipping area with junior Adam Fleetwood. “I’m getting this order ready to be shipped out, so I’m printing off labels to put on there,” Fleetwood explains.
Like the other juniors in the room, Fleetwood began working for Eagle Manufacturing in the summer during the internship. Bowman has been working with Eagle Manufacturing since the beginning.
“We’re learning the actual software, we’re learning how they work and how to incorporate them into actual situations,” Bowman said.
Fleetwood said he likes the hands-on learning of Eagle Manufacturing, which is unlike any other class in the school.
“Here you get more hands on experience with working with people, working cooperatively and just really get in the mindset of what you have to do in the real world. It’s not daisies and tulips all the time,” he said.
“This should honestly be in every school around the state. I think it’s tremendous.”
Down the hall, graphics production manager, senior Caleb Doss, is looking over a large banner that the department just printed for local not-for-profit Mother’s Cupboard. “I basically run all of the production down here, everything from our banner printer to our laser engraver, everything in between,” he said.
Mother’s Cupboard sent the design for the banner. But some customers choose for the graphics department to do the design work, too. “We are about to start a job for just design work soon for two different companies,” Doss said.
He joined Eagle Manufacturing at the end of his junior year and also did the summer internship. “That summer internship really helps. You get seven hours a day, you get the routine, you get the practice,” he said.
Doss went to Franklin Community High School for his freshman and sophomore years before moving to Brown County with his family.
“I did not have this opportunity up in Franklin,” he said. “I come down here to this smaller school and I have this wild opportunity of being in a student-run business. I think more schools should have this type of program.”
