MCC instructor gets creative; HVAC department makes its own machine for troubleshooting systems

Special the River Cities Business Journal

BULLHEAD CITY - Ken Kramer, the resident faculty member for Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) on Mohave Community College's Henry Campus - Bullhead City, spent the school's winter break improving how students will troubleshoot problems during course study.

Kramer had been looking for a more efficient way for students to find problems with heating and refrigeration units in his state-of-the-art HVAC laboratory. Previously, Kramer had to take a good part out and put a bad part in to allow his students to think through a set sequence to determine the source of a problem.

This was not only inefficient, it took many extra man hours to prepare and then repair the unit so it was serviceable for the next class.

Kramer, who has more than 37 years of HVAC experience, remembered seeing a test bank when he was attending a Carrier air-conditioning workshop during his early years in the business. It was that memory and a strong personal desire to be efficient that allowed him to design and play a fix - but he needed help.

He enlisted lab assistant Greg Schlenz and current HVAC students - Rick Alton, Scott Harris, Ray Mendiola and Daniel Nix - to collectively expend 600 man hours over a five-week period, finishing up just in time for spring semester.

Modification designs were critical, but what is remarkable was the cost. Kramer's pool of talent modified 14 of 16 units in the Henry Campus lab for just under $200 per unit. This is in contrast to a request to Carrier to price a test bank made by Kramer.

First, Carrier no longer produces a test bank, and company officials told Kramer that if they did make a similar test bank it would cost between $20,000 and $30,000, depending on the requested degree and variation of unit failure.

“Our contribution would be priced at just above the median price of $25,000 if it were to be manufactured through Carrier,” he said. “Now we can maximize the amount of time a student can spend hands-on troubleshooting.

“No longer will a group of students have to redundantly troubleshoot a specific system or unit failure over and over again,” he said. “Now there is flexibility to challenge a student on an individual basis - simply by the instructor flipping a particular toggle switch.”

For more information about the equipment or MCC's HVAC program, contact an academic advisor on the nearest MCC campus. For more information about the modifications completed by Kramer and his group, call Kramer on the Bullhead City campus at (928)-758-3926.