About Eagle Nest Enterprises

Eagle Nest Enterprises was founded in 2020 during the height of Covid to serve high school students who no longer had access to in person learning. Since our founding, our mission has broadened to include working with students of all ages from 13 to 88. What started as a laid-off high school teacher finishing off a class of seniors using 30 year-old home welding equipment,  has evolved. With the help of industry sponsors and trade union support, we now have the newest electronic inverter machine technology, cutting edge CNC equipment and a full time welding program based out of a commercial aircraft hangar.

Our Lead Instructor

Lead instructor David Richards has over twenty years of teaching experience working with high school students and adults.  A graduate of the University of Wyoming for his bachelors in Technology Education, he finished a Master’s degree in Curriculum and Instructional Design in 2023. When not teaching students how to melt metal, he can be found fabricating all kinds of products for fun. Past projects have included his last two houses, aircraft hangars, airplanes, hovercrafts, restoring jeeps, and anything else he can get his hands on.

Administration

Bookkeeper and scheduler Caroline Richards’s main challenge is to keep David focused. After running an in home daycare for the last fifteen years, she has taken on business management of Eagle Nest Enterprises. She is also the resident CNC plasma cutter expert and will be branching out into design.

Why we are different

We are different from community colleges and trade schools. Our class sizes are deliberately limited to no more than five people to assure that each student has their own dedicated machine with no waiting lines.  Keeping numbers down also assures maximum instructor access. Yes, we could add more people and run bigger, but that would compromise our mission. We don’t have to, so we won’t.

We teach all common commercial welding processes, with a mix of machines from vintage transformers to cutting edge digital pulse capable inverters. Nobody has nicer equipment than we have invested in, and it’s all included in the welding experience.