A Holy Trinity Academy alumnus’ first job out of high school has resulted into a labour of love and a national championship.
Shayne Rouxel, 21, of Okotoks won the national championship at the Post Secondary Precision Machine division at the Skills Canada Competition in Edmonton May 14-15.
He went into the competition expecting virtually any project to be thrown at him.
“I had no idea what the project was going to be,” said Rouxel, a third-year apprentice machinist with Rangeland Industrial Services north of High River. “I just showed up and there’s a blueprint on the lathe, I looked at the dimensions and away I go.”
The competition consisted of working on a lathe on May 14 and with a mill the next day. Both the lathe and the mill consisted of working with steel. The lathe work had Rouxel trying to make a sort of nut-and-bolt system.
“All the machines were lined up side-by-side so I could just turn my head and see how the other guys were doing,” Rouxel said with a laugh. “It made it more intense. You don’t want to let the other guy get too far ahead of you.
“I’m a pretty competitive guy.”
Rouxel handed in his project after Day 1, and it was judged.
“They don’t tell you how you did, they just let the suspense build,” Rouxel said. “I made one little mistake but I thought I did fairly well.”
The millwork involved milling down a block of steel to a certain sized square and putting in intricate mill patterns and holes.
“I thought I nailed it,” said Rouxel, who lives in Okotoks. “I just hoped one of the other guys made a mistake bigger than I did (on the lathe) and I would win.”
He didn’t think he had won when the winners were announced later that evening (May 15).
“They called out the guy from New Brunswick and then the guy from Quebec,” Rouxel said. “I was beginning to worry. I thought I did alright on my projects but maybe some other guy really nailed it.”
Rouxel qualified for the nationals by winning the provincial competition in Edmonton on May 10-11, which was set up similar to the national competition.
He won the provincials despite not quite completing his mill project in the allotted three hours on the opening day.
“The mill was really tough, I don’t think very many guys did,” Rouxel said. “At first I didn’t think I had enough done to win, but it was a tough project… I started to think other people would make mistakes too and I still had a chance to win.”
He was named the winner, and after a weekend break at his Okotoks home, he drove back to Edmonton on the Sunday night to prepare for the national competition.
Rouxel got interested in becoming a machinist shortly after graduating from Holy Trinity Academy in 2009.
He admitted HTA isn’t as well known as Foothills Composite High School for producing trade students.
“HTA still prepared me to for machinery — there is a lot of math work to it,” Rouxel said. “I took the pure math stream at HTA and at SAIT a lot of the other students struggled with the math. HTA definitely prepared me for that.
Unfortunately, Rouxel won’t be going to Germany in the near future. The post secondary machinery division was one of the few categories at the Skills Canada competition in which the winner does not advance to the Worlds in Europe.
bcampbell@okotoks.greatwest.ca
