Building RenovationWestern OhioDayton

Wayne High School Robotics Lab

Huber Heights City Schools set out to put an industrial robotics program inside Wayne High School, in a room the district first had to clear out. A robotics cell is not classroom equipment: it wants three-phase power, compressed air, conditioned air of its own and a floor that can carry it, and none of that was in the space.

The room was rebuilt from the structure out, under a single CTE contract on a pre-bid TOP-C unit price agreement. The drop ceiling and grid came out, the hard ceiling above was patched and painted, and the floor went down to the sleepers for a new subfloor, a skim coat and Nora Norament tile. The interior partition wall was removed. New masonry openings were cut to the hallway on a new structural lintel for a storefront entry with double door and sidelights and a separate window, with ballistic film on the glazing, so the program is visible from the corridor. A framed storage surround, a rolling ladder, a floating countertop at the Bantam Tools CNC stations and new bench tables and desks finish the room, with five displays.

The systems behind it are the substance. The air handling unit on the gym mezzanine was replaced with a new one serving the lab, with hot water heating and chilled water cooling piped from the mechanical room off the existing chiller and pumps, plus all new supply and return ductwork and grilles. A new 208-volt three-phase 250-amp panel, 30 new 20-amp circuits, 12 combination power and data floor boxes and four ceiling cord reels distribute power. Suspended LED strip fixtures with dimming replaced the lighting, three half-inch compressed air lines run to the robots off the existing compressor, and CAT 6 drops, a network switch and HDMI to the displays finish it.

Workbenches and monitors beneath the Wayne Robotics wall graphic at Huber Heights

Yaskawa robot arms in safety enclosures on the Huber Heights lab benches

Row of robotic training cells in the Huber Heights lab

Controller trainers and ceiling monitors along the robotics lab benches

Blue Yaskawa robot arm in its enclosure in the Wayne Robotics lab

Technical Discussion

Air, power and data for a robotics cell

Most schools starting a robotics program start by choosing the robots. The building systems get decided second, usually after a quote is in hand, and that order is what makes these rooms expensive. This one went the other way: the services were designed and built against a layout, and the machines — all owner-provided — were placed into a room already able to hold them.

The list of what a cell needs that a classroom does not is short, and none of it optional. Three-phase power at 208 volts, which is why a 250-amp panel went into the mechanical and electrical room rather than a subpanel off the nearest classroom feed. Compressed air, three half-inch lines run to the robots off the compressor already in the IT closet rather than a new one. Thirty 20-amp circuits, because a room of controllers, simulators and desktop mills draws in a way a room of laptops does not. And 12 combination power and data floor boxes, because a cell stands in the middle of a room and cannot be fed from a wall.

Air reached furthest. The unit serving this space was replaced on the gym mezzanine and tied to hot water heating and chilled water cooling piped from the mechanical room, reusing the district's existing chiller and pumps — which keeps the plant the maintenance staff already knows and adds no second piece of refrigeration equipment. Its controls are stand-alone, and that is the trade: the lab is conditioned on its own schedule, and the district accepts one unit off the building's front end.

Doing this before the equipment was chosen is what kept it affordable. Floor boxes go in concrete, and concrete is open once. A panel in the electrical room, ductwork above a hard ceiling, air lines to fixed positions — each is priced as construction while the room is open, and as a change order afterward. The equipment is procurement. It can be replaced, and it will be; the services are what let that turnover happen without touching the building again.

Our Work