Sheridan Students Bring Home Four Medals from Ontario Technological Skills Competition

Sheridan Apprenticeship students won an unprecedented four medals at the 26^th annual Ontario Technological Skills Competition held last week at RIM Park in Kitchener-Waterloo.  Three students swept the Precision Machining competition, taking Gold (Casper Lasecki), Silver (Kyle Dixon) and Bronze (Geoff Turner).  An additional Gold medal was earned by Alexandar Bozinovski in the Computer Numerical Control (CNC) competition.

For the Precision Machining event, competitors were tasked with manufacturing two projects with a time limit of four hours each.  They used a traditional Centre Lathe and Vertical Milling Machine to produce the parts to the required tolerances from a given blueprint.  “These students showed that they had put in the necessary practice time, both at school and at work, and it really paid off,” said Michael Reid, their professor and coach.

Alexander Bozinovski

The CNC competition took place over two days, and required competitors to apply a CAM software to write programming codes to machine the supplied material to a high level of specification and precision.  “I was very impressed by Alexandar’s ability to quickly access the requirements of the task and figure out a way to program the required toolpath to efficiently get the job done,” said Craig Charlton, Bozinovski’s professor.

The Ontario Technological Skills Competition is the largest of its kind in Canada, with over 65 skilled trade and vocational contests, attracting 1,900 competitors from high schools and postsecondary institutions across the province.

Winning Gold at the event has qualified both Lasecki and Bozinovski to compete at the Skills Canada National Competition, which takes place in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan May 27 – 30.