After SCTCC Water Environment Technologies students attended the annual Minnesota American Water Works Association conference in September, three of them ended up on the cover of Breeze, an industry magazine.
The students were at the conference in Duluth to take part in the pipe-tapping competition against teams throughout the state.
“These students only had about two and a half weeks of practice from the start of school before they took the leap outside of their comfort zone to do this in front of a crowd of 100-200 industry pros,” explained instructor Gregg Kropp.
Teams use a drill to manually place a ¾-inch hole in a 6-inch ductile iron water main filled with water and under pressure, which is a real-world scenario if a new water service line were installed into a live water main. The drilled hole is then tapped by cutting threads so that a valve can be threaded into the pipe.
A power tool would be used for a real-world application, but the teams manually drilled with a Mueller B-101 pipe-tapping machine for the competition.
Neither SCTCC team won, but Kropp was still impressed and proud that his students took part, as the competition winner was a city team who does the work for a living.
Breeze recapped the event and used a photo that featured three SCTCC students (left-right): Treton Metzger (kneeling), Donald Bethke, and Zach Roca.