Troy

The new $17 million manufacturing training center at Hudson Valley Community College is not open yet, but classes there for the fall are already filling up.

Students have filled nearly three of six available day and evening sessions planned for September, said David Larkin, professor of advanced manufacturing technology in the School of Engineering and Industrial Technologies at HVCC.

Opening in September, the new 37,000-square-foot, two-story Gene Haas Center for Advanced Manufacturing Skills will be seven times larger than the college's current training facility built in 1953.

The new facility will be able to train 102 students a semester, compared to 51 students at the old center, Larkin said. Nearly half the slots for fall classes at the new facility are now filled.

"We will have the capacity to train more machinist, programmer, toolmaker, and industrial maintenance students in what will be the most advanced manufacturing educational facility in the U.S.," he said. "Right now, we have more jobs available for our students that we have students."

He said students affiliated with the Watervliet Arsenal make up nearly one of the two evening sessions that will start in the fall. A session contains 17 students, Larkin said. There will be two evening sessions and four day sessions each semester, up from one and two sessions, respectively, at the current facility.

The new center is named for the owner of Haas Automation, an American machine tool builder headquartered in Oxnard, Calif., that makes precision machine tools and specialized accessory tooling. This includes computer numerically controlled tools, such as vertical and horizontal milling and drilling machines, lathes, and rotary tables.

Haas will also be operating a retail outlet store at the center for prospective customers to inspect potential purchases.

Multimillionaire owner Gene Haas is donating the company's $1 million Formula 1 racing car, where it will be suspended from the ceiling at the center's entrance.

Save for a vertical band saw now used in the current HVCC training facility, all production equipment in the Haas center will be new, reflecting the latest examples of computer numerical control (CNC) tools. More than 20 private companies are providing new production equipment.

Such CNC equipment relies on an operator's use of computer programming to fabricate metal, plastic, wood, ceramic or composites into specialty parts and components.

For example, one of the four new 3D printers will be able to fabricate items using Kevlar, a heat-resistant synthetic fiber stronger than steel, that is used in such products as bulletproof vests, military helmets, tires and racing sails.

CNC operators can expect a median salary of nearly $53,000 a year, according to the U.S. Labor Department Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And that could go higher, as U.S. industry deals with a skills gap in trained workers, according to a 2015 study from the Manufacturing Institute, an arm of the National Association of Manufacturers.