On September 17, at the Department of Biosystem Engineering at the University of Life Sciences in Poznań, the final preliminary round took place, the winner of which will represent our country at the EuroSkills 2020 competition in the agricultural and construction machinery technician category.
The competitors were the winners of last year’s Young Mechanic for a Medal competition organized by the Polish Chamber of Commerce for Agricultural Machines and Facilities, who had been preparing throughout the year under the supervision of Dr. Mirosław Czechlowski from the Department of Biostystems Engineering and an expert at WorldSkills Poland.
During the finals, the competitors: Miłosz Augustyn, Piotr Bryszak and Marek Wiącek had to face three tasks prepared by experts: Dr. Czechlowski, Sebastian Bawej and Przemysław Gliwa representing the Steyr and Pöttinger brands, sponsors of the Agricultural and construction machinery technology category at the competition in Graz.
The first task was to measure the output of the hydraulic pump on the Steyr 4100 Multi tractor. However, before that, the competitors had to locate and remove a short circuit fault in the engine’s crankshaft speed sensor. In the second task, the finalists were to install the swath conditioner drive belts on the Pöttinger Nova Cat 302 RBC mower, and the crux of the task was to adjust the alignment of the pulleys and the idler pulley. The third task was to carry out the calibration test on the Pöttinger Terrasem C4 Artis seed drill.
The first task turned out to be so difficult that none of the competitors made the required measurements, and only one of them managed to start the tractor engine. The second task was completed by all competitors, although only one of them did it flawlessly. By far the simplest task was to perform the calibration test in the seeder.
For each of the tasks it was possible to get a maximum of 20 points, and the points scored in the first two tasks of the final carried out on 4 September in Warsaw during the training at Bosch Rexroth were added to the scores obtained in Poznań.
After counting all the points, it turned out that the undisputed winner of the final is Marek Wiącek, who scored 84 points out of 100 possible. The second place went to Miłosz Augustyn, who collected 60 points. Piotr Bryszak, who came third lost the competition for second place by only one point.
Thanks to this victory, Marek Wiącek joined the Polish national team for the EuroSkills 2020 competition, which was postponed from September this year to January 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. At the competition in Graz (Austria), our country will be represented by 17 competitors competing in 16 categories.
