AUBURN – Central Maine Community College has won a $1.3 million grant to help students in Auburn and beyond better understand machine tool design.

“This is the largest grant our college has ever received,” said Diane Dostie, dean of Corporate and Community Services. “It’s exciting.”

The grant is from the National Science Foundation’s competitive Advanced Technical Education program. The goal is to promote improvement in the way technicians are educated. CMCC will be the lead institution, and will work with other colleges.

“I am particularly proud that of America’s 1,300 community colleges, CMCC was selected to lead this project,” President Scott Knapp said.

The $1.3 million will allow the college to build a “Virtual Ideation Platform” project. That will involve installing cameras on equipment, allowing students in Auburn who make machine parts to communicate with engineering students at other colleges who design machine parts.

All of the conversation will be through Web sites and e-mail. “We’re putting cameras on high-end machine equipment, computer numeric controlled,” which is robotic equipment where “machines will actually change tools all by themselves,” Dostie said. “That’s the way industry is going.”

Often designers who have never made machine parts design parts that are difficult to build. “We’re trying to eliminate that by having our machine tool students talk to design students,” Dostie said. “And our students will better understand the designer’s point of view.”

Initially, students will work on simple projects. “They’ll have conversations where the problems were, what worked, what didn’t work. It makes it all real,” Dostie said.

Today, manufacturers build pieces of parts and ship them off to other companies that also build parts. “That really mirrors what’s going on in the United States,” Dostie said. “It really is exciting to be able to do that with students.”

Other colleges and universities involved are Keene State College in New Hampshire, Springfield Technical Community College in Massachusetts, the Connecticut College of Technology/Tunxis Community College, University of Southern Maine Department of Technology, and the Plastics Engineering Department at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, the RapidTech Center at Saddleback College in California, and the Manufacturers Association of Maine, which will provide industry-based expertise.

After students and faculty talk to each other, it will lead to new and improved machine tool curriculum in Auburn and beyond.

Bruce Tisdale, president of Mountain Machine Works in Auburn, who hires machine tool graduates, said he’s always believed CMCC has the best machine tool technology program in New England. But after this program gets under way, “it will be the best program in the United States.” he said. Tisdale also serves on the college’s education foundation board.

CMCC expects the cameras will be installed, and the project under way by January.