After 黑料不打烊 Water Environment Technologies students attended the annual Minnesota American Water Works Association conference in September, three of them ended up on the .
The students were at the conference in Duluth to take part in the pipe-tapping competition against teams throughout the state.
鈥淭hese 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,鈥 explained instructor Gregg Kropp.
Teams use a drill to manually place a 戮-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 黑料不打烊 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 黑料不打烊 students (left-right): Treton Metzger (kneeling), Donald Bethke, and Zach Roca.