Tijn Rooijakkers Allround verspaner

“When I completed my havo education in 2021, I had no idea what I wanted to do. After a gap year, I decided it was time to make a choice and visited an education fair for inspiration. There, I walked past all the college programmes all afternoon, without success. On my way out, the VDL stand, where all kinds of cool products were on display, caught my eye. I asked the stand crew how these products were made and was immediately sold: I wanted to be able to do that too! Not much later I signed up for the BBL training course All-round machinist and became an apprentice at VDL. Fortunately, I have never regretted that.”
 

Development comes first

"As a BBL apprentice at VDL, I get all the space I need to get the most out of my training. The focus here is really on my personal development. Besides making the work pieces for my training, I also get to experiment with other challenges. A great example is a piece of work I recently made: a cube with an enclosed ball, milled from a single block of aluminium. A super challenging piece of work that no colleague has made before. It was quite a challenge, but in the end I succeeded. I'm proud of that."
 

Different techniques

It's super nice that I get to take the initiative to try new things. This keeps it challenging for me. And I don't even have to limit myself to machining. I am also allowed to work in other departments of our company to broaden my knowledge. For instance, in the fields of eroding, wire EDM and grinding. This gives me the feeling that I will soon have all the knowledge I need to make beautiful precision parts for the big boys in the high-tech industry. That's what we are the best at at VDL."
 

Passing on knowledge

"As a BBL apprentice, I am supervised by my practical trainer, an experienced professional. It's great to have such a colleague beside you when you just can't figure it out. Now that I am in my third year, I find that I can also fulfil that role for pupils from the first and second year. I have already done the assignments they are given now. If they have questions, they can come to me and I help them further. In doing so, I refresh my own knowledge and can teach my colleagues something new: a real win-win. Besides being able to learn from each other, it's also very sociable to work with peers who share the same passion. Currently, all seven students are working together on one project: a replica of a milling machine. Everyone is contributing to this, regardless of their year of study. That's super cool, isn't it?"