6th Graders Visit Cascade Designs

Hammers are banging and brightly colored earplugs are visible in the 6th graders' ears. It's snowshoe building season at Explorer West. The first part of the process models assembly line strategies: measuring webbing, counting out D-rings and punching holes in bindings. It's a team effort, including very generous donations of supplies from local outdoor manufacturer, Cascade Designs.

To learn more about the assembly process, students travelled to SoDo for a tour of Cascade Designs this afternoon. We were greeted by EW parent and Purchasing Supply Chain Manager, Dan Means, and Chris Parkhurst the Division Manager for Winter Products who introduced the students to the company and the facility. Cascade Designs is a local company who designs and manufactures their products on-site at their 1st Ave. S. facility. Students saw the assembly of the MSR Whisperlite stoves that EW uses on backpacking trips. Our tour guide, Manufacturing Engineer Nate Pattison, walked us through the snowshoe assembly and described the new binding system being used on the new models.They make approximately 300 pairs of snowshoes each day at the factory, that was an eye-opener given our much slower rate at EW. A highlight of the snowshoe tour was the machine that tests a snowshoe by repeatedly stressing it.

We also got to tour the new design office and show off a sample of our original design. Finally, we toured the thermarest portion of the plant. Foam pads and air mattresses were both in production as we walked through. To make the foam pads lighter, holes are punched in the body and then sent into HUGE storage bags. These extrusions are then used for fill in Thermarest pillows. Nothing is wasted.

Now that we've seen one company's process, we have something to compare our own to. Although we are working with irregular pieces like willow branches, there are certainly many ways we can apply what we learned at Cascade Designs to the classroom. Check back later for more updates on our building process.