Penn College college students fabricate metal globe for Little League

Danielle Gannon, a graphic designer at Little League – with assist from fellow graphic designer Natalie Lincalis and artistic director Amanda Cropper-Rose – developed the idea drawings for the globe. All three are Penn College graduates.

The Little League sketches served as a mannequin for Penn College’s Craig A. Miller. The assistant professor and division head of engineering design know-how used the drawings to plan blueprints for Allen and his welding college students to comply with in fabricating the globe.

“When I saw the blueprints, I was like, ‘OK, this is going to be a handful,’” recalled Clayton J. Fegley, a welding & fabrication engineering know-how pupil from McClure. “But as the project went on, it definitely got more manageable. I was just excited to have a hand in this project knowing that it’s going to be seen by so many.”

“I was honestly shocked. I didn’t think it was doable,” added classmate Alaina S. Myers, of Hanover. “I had never worked on a project like this. I was intrigued and super excited to get my hands on it. I had no idea what to expect.”

Neither did Allen. That’s why he instructed some college students to assemble a mockup of the globe out of delicate metal. About half the scale of the eventual 6-foot-diameter sculpture, the prototype prompted an important determination.

“We found that if we set the globe up vertically that we could not reach the top of it,” Allen defined. “So, we decided to build a fixture to lay the globe sideways so we could actually spin it and roll it. That way, it would be a lot easier to reach the top and the bottom to weld things together.”

While one group of scholars fabricated the “practice globe,” one other contingent started engaged on the actual factor. They welded the bottom out of three sheets of three/8-inch stainless-steel, leaving pockets so the eventual 1,200-pound construction could possibly be moved by forklift. During the preliminary stage, a pair college students additionally employed a CNC plasma cutter to supply the globe’s stand. Allen later used the identical machine to chop out the continents, in addition to Little League’s keystone emblem for placement on high of the globe.