Festo designed a workstation for the 2017 Refrigeration WorldSkills competition. Contestants carried out a challenging project, while putting the workstation to the test. This workstation is now available to schools training skilled refrigeration technicians.

This capstone project allows future refrigeration workers to practice a variety of skills necessary to fabricate, install, and commission a challenging refrigeration circuit. The project is aimed at producing ice while recovering the extracted energy to heat a water tank at a specified temperature, and then rejecting additional heat into the atmosphere through an air-cooled condenser.

The workstation is a turnkey solution that includes all the mechanical (except copper tubes) and electrical hardware as well as control devices. A set of drawings including the refrigerant flow diagram, electrical and mechanical plans is supplied. The student manual has many photos and videos to guide the student during fabrication.

To help the instructor evaluate the work performed by the students, a work assessment section with a list of criteria is available for each exercise.

The system has been designed so that the project can be repeated indefinitely. Replacement parts and consumable parts packages are available as needed.

The following list of items should be provided by the customer:

- 20 m (66 ft) of 3/8 in copper tube

- 2.5 m (79 in) of 1/4 in copper tube

- Pipe bender

- Pipe cutter

- Pipe reamer

- Ruler or tape measure and marker

- Brazing torch with a supply of oxygen and a supply of acetylene

- Sil-Fos brazing alloy

- Silver brazing alloy

- Paste flux

- Cloths or wipes

- Solenoid valve magnet tools

- Fire extinguisher

- Tools for fastening screws and nuts (e.g., screwdriver, wrench)

- Drilling tool

- Drilling bits

- Refrigerant sealant for threaded components

- Gauge manifold

- Nitrogen cylinder

- Vacuum pump

- Vacuum gauge

- Electronic charging scale

- 3 kg of 7 lbs. R-134a