Whitcraft: Leveraging a Unique Talent Pipeline
Tucked away in the Quiet Corner of Northeastern Connecticut is a mid-sized company that has been serving the world’s leading aerospace companies for decades,Whitcraft, LLC. At the company’s Eastford facility, nearly 300 employees carry out highly technical specialty sheet metal fabrication and machining for companies like Pratt & Whitney, GE Aviation, Rolls Royce, Honeywell and other top names in aerospace.
Whitcraft is a good neighbor to the community, hiring high school and college students for co-ops and internships, and building an employment pipeline that spans Ellis Technical High School in Danielson, Quinebaug Valley Community College and UConn to fill its needs for qualified, innovative engineers. “Our employees are world-class technicians,” says Sandy Karosi, HR Manager.
Karosi, Engineering Manager Allen Roy and a rep from sister company Connecticut Tool and Manufacturing have attended the UConn Engineering Career Fair each year since 2008.
Among the company’s valued employees are four UConn Engineering alumni, including Chad Chmura, a Junior Engineer who received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 2012.
Whitcraft usually hires one or two year-round interns each year. The company recruits juniors and seniors, with the intention of hiring them after they earn their degrees. Whitcraft has a long tradition of recruiting co-op students from Ellis Tech because “These students often have job shop experience, and that knowledge puts them much further ahead,” according to Karosi, who adds, “When we recruit interns, we look for students who have experience or hobbies that demonstrate an interest in hands-on, mechanical things, such as rebuilding an engine.”
Chmura: Hands-on Engineer
UConn alumnus Chmura started working at Whitcraft as a junior at Ellis Tech. Though he intended to pursue his degree in the automotive program, Chmura ended up in the Machine Shop because it offered “cooler tools.”
Karosi says, “When Chad applied to Whitcraft, he arrived for the interview with pages of autoCAD sketches, blueprints of a one-tenth scale remote control monster truck that he designed and built, and other portfolio items that showed his mechanical skills. Chad had an impressive mechanical aptitude; he’s the kind of kid who taught himself CNC (Computer Numerical Control) software.”
Though Chmura was the valedictorian of his high school class, he admits that UConn was not in his sights post-high school. “I did not envision myself coming to UConn because of the cost. But my high school guidance counselor told me of the Presidential Scholars Program the day before college applications were due, and I scrambled to submit my application in time.”
Chmura was accepted to UConn Engineering and received the scholarship which, combined with an engineering scholarship that covered the cost of his books, made UConn an affordable option. Karosi notes that after Chmura began his coursework, Whitcraft revised his work schedule to accommodate his studies. “We have a policy with our interns: school comes first.”
Throughout his undergraduate years, Chmura worked 15-25 hours/week, racing to Whitcraft after his classes concluded daily. The two experiences, along with his training at Ellis Tech, complemented each other nicely, according to Chmura.
“My pre-UConn education prepared me 180 degrees differently from students who attended traditional high schools. I struggled initially through some of my gen-ed courses, but during my junior and senior years, when my engineering courses ramped up, I was better prepared and less stressed about my classes than many of my peers.”
After his reassignment to the engineering team throughout his years at UConn, Chmura found that once his engineering courses ramped up, he was able to apply his engineering lessons and contribute more actively on large projects at Whitcraft.
One project he recalls with pride involved the design and development of an automated process for bending tubes at different angles. The French customer had been outsourcing the task to an outside vendor. Chmura designed and built a hydraulic machine capable of bending the tubes at two angles with minimal processing, enabling the customer to bring the process in-house and effectively cut production and distribution costs in half.
For their senior design project at UConn, Chmura and his fellow team members, Callan Gruber and Waleed Zawawi (advised by Dr. Jiong Tang), worked on a project involving wheel optimization for sliding glass doors. The team developed a way to test various types of load wheels — the mechanism that supports the sliding motion of the door — for Stanley Access Technologies. The team’s fully-automated test setup was able to accurately measure the rolling resistance of various types of loads while under different conditions (load, temperature, speed, direction, track surface materials) and achieve repeatable results. The project netted the 2012 Mechanical Engineering senior design competition, receiving the top $1000 prize among all ME projects.
After Chmura earned his B.S. in May 2012, Whitcraft offered him a full-time salaried job. Karosi says, “He’s doing phenomenally. He’s working on a Raytheon missile project for which he serves as lead engineer.”
Since Karosi started keeping rack, the company has hosted seven UConn Engineering interns. Two of the company’s engineers are currently pursuing their master’s degree in mechanical engineering at UConn, with tuition reimbursement help from Whitcraft.
Chmura is an outspoken advocate for Whitcraft, which he says “makes me feel appreciated.” Furthermore, he says, Whitcraft provides an outstanding manufacturing environment because it is continually upgrading its equipment to include devices such as direct metal laser sintering and 3D prototyping machines, CAD software, laser cutting devices and other equipment. “I can’t imagine working for a better company,” he concludes.
. Malloy’s proposed Next Generation Connecticut.
Seniors Nicholas Morse and Leia Dwyer, with their advisor, Dr. William Mustain (Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering) demonstrated “The Chegger,” a model car that runs on a hydrogen-powered fuel cell. The car was developed for an American Institute of Chemical Engineers-sponsored competition, ChemECar. Entries must rely on chemical reactions to power the motor and stop the car. The Chegger employs a light-activated electronic circuit incorporating an iodine chemical reaction to stop the car. For the ChemECar competition, vehicles must travel a fixed distance while carrying a payload, but the distance and weight requirements are not revealed to teams until competition day. Dr. Mustain and his research team are making advances in the area of electrocatalyst materials for energy conversion and storage, and in enhancing our understanding of the fundamental science behind fuel cell technology, that may contribute to the future of fuel cell applications in energy.
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She returned to UConn for what would have been her senior year and began studying mechanical engineering. Monica didn’t completely leave Germany behind, though – she currently lives in McMahon Hall as an active member and resident assistant of the Eurotech learning community.
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Doctoral candidates Lu Han and 
stream ready for sequestration. While there may be economic costs associated with mandating carbon capture, it will generate a source of stable, clean energy in the long-term.”
Conductivity,” Professor Anson Ma and colleagues from Rice University detail their recent breakthrough revolutionizing the use of carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are rolled cylinders of graphene sheets that have unprecedented mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties. In the past, many of the potential real-world applications of CNTs remained unfulfilled because researchers experienced great difficulties dispersing and processing CNTs into macroscopic objects while maintaining their fascinating properties. To address this problem, Dr. Ma and colleagues from Rice developed a scalable fluid-based process for spinning CNTs into lightweight and multifunctional fibers. These fibers combine the mechanical strength of carbon fibers with the specific electrical conductivity of metals, opening up the exciting possibility of using CNTs in aerospace, field-emission, and power-transmission applications. The article can be accessed at:
Dr. Lee S. Langston, professor emeritus of Mechanical Engineering, recently published columns in 
Science Foundation grant, recently received travel grant funding from the NASA 
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Dr. Chengyu Cao sees a day in the not-so-distant future when intelligent robots will be working alongside humans on a wide range of important tasks from advancing science, to performing deep sea rescues, to monitoring our natural habitats. It’s a bold leap from the pre-programmed factory robots and remote-controlled drones we are most familiar with today. Cao, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and his research team are creating a new generation of smart machines – devices that are fully autonomous and capable of navigating their way through our complex world unassisted. These machines will not only be able to travel untethered from one point to another in space and perform tasks; they will be able to “think” on their own using artificial intelligence to adjust to unforeseen obstacles and situations in their environment – a tree, a building, a sudden gust of wind or change in tidal current – without human interface. It is the stuff of which science fiction movies are made. Read the full story, and watch the exciting video,