Apollo Career Center and Bluffton High School student Trevor Meyer took the bronze medal for third place in the Skills USA Championships recently. The event was in automated manufacturing technology held in Kansas City, Mo.

Over 5,600 career and technical education students joined in the hands on-competition in 94r different trade, technical and leadership fields areas.

Working against the clock and each other, the participants proved their expertise in job skills for occupations such as electronics, technical drafting, precision machining, medical assisting and culinary arts.

There were also competitions in leadership skills, such as extemporaneous speaking and conducting meetings by parliamentary procedures.

The contests are planned by technical committees made up of representatives of labor and management and are designed to test the skills needed for a successful entry level performance in given occupational fields.

Safety practices and procedures - an area of great concern to labor and management alike - are judged and graded and constitute a portion of a contestant's score.

The Automated Manufacturing Technology contest evaluates teams for employment in integrated manufacturing technology fields of computer aided drafting/design (CAD) and computer aided manufacturing (CAM).

It also evaluates teams for employment in integrated manufacturing technology fields of computer aided drafting/design (CAD), computer aided manufacturing (CAM), and computer numerical controlled machining (CNC).

CAD operators construct the part geometry; the CAM operator generates the tool paths; and the CNC operator sets up and machines the part. Plotting is not a scored event, however, the contestants must be able to generate a plot file that will be used to send their data to the plotter.