NEW TRADE IN ENGINEERING

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29844, 9 June 1962, Page 13

NEW TRADE IN ENGINEERING

Apprenticeships In Plastics

One plastics manufacturing firm in Christchurch has applied to and been approved by the New Zealand Apprenticeship Committee as a company fit to train apprentices in the plastics branch of engineering.

Another firm has applied to the committee to be approved for the training of apprentices in this new branch of engineering because it has a 17-year-old employee who wants to be the first plastics engineering apprentice in Christchurch. The District Commissioner of Apprenticeship (Mr V. E. Thomas) said yesterday that firms should apply through the local committee for approval as employers entitled to train plastics apprentices. The plastics trade apprenticeship, as a branch of the engineering trade, was recently approved by the Arbitration Court on the application of the New Zealand Engineers’ Union with the approval and backing of the Plastics Institute of New Zealand.

The apprenticeship is for a five-year term, and the New Zealand Apprenticeship Committee has laid down the following programme as a guide to both employers and apprentices in the new trade:— First 18 months in the tool room learning the use of hand tools, measuring instruments and gaining knowledge of fits and tolerances, milling, grinding, die-sinking, and so on; 12 months in the moulding shop working with machine fitters on machine maintenance and seting, die changing, handling of various plastics raw materials: 12 months in the drawing office, learning mechanical drawing and plastic moulding tool design; last period of apprenticeship, specialised training in two of the main branches of the trade—injection moulding, compression moulding, extrusion, blow moulding, vacuum forming, and hydraulic circuits, electric controlling gear, and techniques of moulding.