Search - Experience Matters - Grand Valley State University

Consumers Energy Co-op Experience

Ryan
Major: Electrical Engineering During this internship, my main task was service design for the metro systems. Metro systems are all underground in major cities (Jackson, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Flint etc.) as opposed to overhead lines normally seen on poles. Using CAD software, I designed the existing and planned services for each of my jobs. I also did calculations in order to find the correct transformer and fuses for each of my jobs.

X-59 Operations Engineering Experience

Noah
Major: Electrical Engineering Performed a complete inventory on a T-38 canopy and crew escape system so it can be recycled for the X-59, performed a complete analysis of the oxygen flow for the life support system in multiple scenarios, and assisted with test set up for a full performance test of the life support system.

First Co-Op Rotation @ L3Harris

Michael
Major: Electrical Engineering This semester was my first co-op rotation of three with L3Harris. I worked on a few different programs that test different products before they are produced, like calibration tests and temperature tests. My goal for these programs was to make each program better than it was before, whether it be making it more efficient, adding new quality-of-life improvements, or reducing memory usage. I also helped fix hardware for these tests, like computers or proprietary hardware, to make sure that everything was functioning as desired.

Controls Engineering Co-op - 2nd Rotation

Jaret
Major: Electrical Engineering This semester I spent some time doing electrical design and programming on machines, as well as some wiring and machine commissioning. I also accompanied our engineers and builders to a customer site in town on one occasion.

EMC CO-OP 2

Brittany
Major: Electrical Engineering As a co-op student I was tasked with completing several tests for clients, analyzing and simulating signal integrity projects, and assisting in the development of the company website.

EMC Co-op

Nicklas
Major: Electrical Engineering Over the semester I worked on products for several companies from various industries testing and debugging their products. I also worked on internal lab infrastructure projects to make testing more efficient and accurate.

A Winter at Phase 1

Benjamin
Major: Electrical Engineering Tractor Downforce- Updated a pre existing system that controls the depth of planting wheels. Pizza Chiller- Updated a system that dispenses water at the correct temperature for making pizzas IOT Outlet - Measured the RF characteristics of printed antennas and changed part to balance them BLE beacon- Prototyped a Bluetooth beacon that will be used to track portable road segments BLE pressure sensor- Measured the connection quality of different BLE sensors.

SAF Holland Electrical Co-Op Rotation 2

Alexander
Major: Electrical Engineering The Electrical Engineering department performs work related to all aspects of product development and production. The tasks have been hands-on and provide great opportunities to work on the development and production of company products. Projects in this rotation included commercial vehicle electrical system network analysis, web server management, microcontroller evaluation, programming, and testing, and extensive research for product development.

LVDE Co-Op

Katie
Major: Electrical Engineering The company is broken into many departments that work together to provide hometown service to all of its customers. I work for the Low Voltage Distribution Engineering section and am assigned the same type of work as the full time employees. I am assigned new business jobs (adding service to houses that are being built or to locations at which no current service exists) and system improvement jobs (upgrading and replacing existing lines). For each job, field work is conducted and designs are completed before the work is sent to a different department for scheduling.

Electrical Engineering Co-op

Noe
Major: Electrical Engineering During my co-op, I was tasked with product testing, documentation, research, prototyping, equipment troubleshooting, and PCB layout projects, among other tasks.

EMC co-op

Joseph
Major: Electrical Engineering I typically ran emissions and immunity tests. I also helped generate reports based on the results of these tests

Third Semester Co-Op At JR Automation

James
Major: Electrical Engineering I mainly worked on prototype projects for a large logistics machine system for our customer.

Experiencing the full spectrum of electronic design

Dongyao
Major: Electrical Engineering -Designed and built a tester printed circuit board. -Redesign and built a commercial product (football stadium lighting) with appropriate supervisions and -Assisted in designing a buck converter for automotive application. -Assisted in the research and development project with EMI shield. -Assisted process engineers in validating testers.

Dematic Co-op III

Collin
Major: Electrical Engineering I worked on some PCB layouts for various internal projects in our Research and Development department. I performed testing, validation, and design of several internal products.

Test Engineering Co-op 3

Collin
Major: Electrical Engineering I worked in test engineering so I helped support and automate the test engineering processes. Much of the work went towards software support specifically. Writing code to fix errors in old software or creating new programs for new testing procedures.

The Final Co-op

Ryan
Major: Electrical Engineering Designed PLC and HMI programs for two projects, one project consisted of modifications to 3 air handling units and the other was the design of two new air handling units. I also went on a few commissioning trips (Indiana and Virginia) to aid in the commissioning and installation process for these projects.

Software and Hardware Development

Kelly
Major: Electrical Engineering This semester I got to dive a bit into hardware development. I helped design and prototype a dongle that will be used by Amway. This dongle communicates with existing water and air filters, and technicians will use it to debug issues for customers whom own these devices. In addition, I worked on software development in Python and C for a missile systems project. I also began to gain more FPGA experience through other tasks I was assigned.

Co-op #3 The Final Twist

Christopher
Major: Electrical Engineering In my previous semesters, I had the ability to work on numerous projects for different West Michigan companies where I learned a lot of valuable skills. However, this semester I had a very narrow focus on a single vision system project. This project included camera evaluation and testing, data set development, and transfer learning algorithms. I was able to utilize a variety of tools in order to complete this project including MATLAB, python-based scripts, TensorFlow and Google's machine learning engine.

Controls Engineering Co-op at

Kyler
Major: Electrical Engineering My day-to-day tasks consisted of hardware and software design for various machines. Projects that I was involved with included a laser marking machine, a pin-stamping poka-yoke machine, robot end-of-arm-tooling configuration, and a rod crimping machine to name a few. I worked on PLC programs, electrical schematic drawings, and also completed standard documentation for all of the machines along with research and development for upcoming projects.

JR Automation - 3rd Rotation

Natalie
Major: Electrical Engineering In my third rotation, I was given a lot of individual responsibility. I got the opportunity to write programs as well as teach routes and points for material handling robots. This is what moves parts through the cell to get the automation moving. I also got to create HMI (Human Machine Interface) screens so that operators can interact with the cell. On top of that I got to write logic for the actual operation of the machine and assist with design decisions to best suit the customer's needs.

Engineering Co-op

Andrea
Major: Electrical Engineering Testing and quality control of device firmware, including the writing and development of automated firmware tests.

Project Management at Koops

Sam
Major: Electrical Engineering I was assigned to the project management team, and was able to work on a variety of tasks and projects. I was tasked with my own project to manage, a small cell containing a single robotic unit. This project provided an excellent introduction to project management. I also assisted in working on various other projects, including multiple robotic sonic welding and clip driving stations, and a resistance welding cell.

Electrical Controls Systems in Manufacturing

Nigel
Major: Electrical Engineering I was responsible for keeping wiring diagram drawings up to date with the machines that were on the manufacturing floor. In addition, I did programming and debugging for multiple Allen Bradley PLCs and an HMI (Human-Machine Interface).

Controls Internship - 1st Rotation

Jaret
Major: Electrical Engineering My tasks included building control panels, wiring machines, editing electrical schematics, debugging machines, and programming PLCs. I also did some work with a client who needed a secondary HMI display on a few of their machines.

A Summer at Phase One

Benjamin
Major: Electrical Engineering Buying parts for PCBs. Construction of several perfboards for demo circuits. Taking radiation patterns from a PCB with helix antennas. Making Helix antennas by wrapping copper wire around an high dielectric material. One big project I did was swapping out a old modem that ran on Verizon's 2G/3G network to Verizon's 4G network. This included getting familiar with AT commands and Mobile network infrastructure.