The Allied Trades shop at Cold Regions Test Center (CRTC) located on the Fort Greely installation in Alaska is the one stop shop for specialty manufacturing needs. The shop supports arctic testing at Cold Regions which falls under Yuma Proving Ground’s (YPG) extreme weather testing umbrella.
“We work on everything that is metal, wood, plastics, and some glass. We produce a wide array of products with those materials. So, anything you could possibly need for the center, especially on tests, we build it here,” explained Chief of the Test Support Division, Kyle Anderson.
The four members of the shop, made up of civilians and contractors, all have varied skills sets.
Ben Selvaggio’s specialty is in welding, Seth Brennan comes from a metallurgical background and brings the artist side, Stan Musgrove is a CDL driver and heavy equipment operator and puts emphasis on the heavy equipment side of the work. Sam Porter specializes in machine work.
The shop uses a combination of high-tech and manual tools ranging from CNC machines, plasma tables to hand cranked machinery. In fact, Porter shares that the team’s favorite piece of machinery is one of its oldest. A gigantic industrial drill press that precisely drills and taps large holes.
“This is not replaceable. There is nothing out there to replace it with to do what it does,” said Porter, “It’s as efficient as the day it was built.”
In late 2023, YPG’s command team along with CRTC’s command team toured the Allied Trades shop just after the Allied Trades team had finished manufacturing a truck bed on an end dump truck.
The team appreciates the variety in work and learning from each other.
“You start here with some basic skills and then you learn a wide range of them along the way,” remarked Selvaggio. Together they fulfill requests which provides continuity in the process.
“Everything is fabricated in one place. We do all the design work as well as the building. We work a lot with the test Program Offices to work on the design of support materials/tools. In many cases we will see our design later in production,” tells Porter.
Working in the arctic does add obstacles so Porter mitigates them with good planning.
“We are definitely more restricted when it comes to material availability. It’s one of the challenges,” tells Porter.
One huge undertaking the entire CRTC team does is prepare for the heavy testing season.
Porter explains, “Everything has to be inventoried and ready to go in the shop. We typically go through our test season without any purchasing. It’s major effort in the summer for us to inventory our parts, pieces, materials, machines, to make sure they are ready to go.”
The shop recently went through an overhaul – with the team saying it’s a 30-year or more life cycle refit and are ready for the arctic test season.
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