Experience Matters - Grand Valley State University

Co-op #2 at JR

Daniel
Major: Mechanical Engineering I worked at a mechanical engineer checking machine drawing packages, detailing packages, and even designing parts for automated machines.

Process Engineering Internship

Andrew
Major: Mechanical Engineering This summer I spent a lot of time doing different design work as well as hands-on building work. As far as the design work I did, I did things such as designing nests for parts to be held while different tests are done on them. I designed nests to hold some blind spot indicators that go in the outside mirrors of a car as well as several nests that hold entire mirrors while they are tested for the amount of torque that it takes to move the mount of the mirror. I also spent some time designing a vacuum system that deposits backings from a glass element into a trash can. When these backings are peeled off of the glass, they are very statically charged and stick to many different things including clothing causing a big mess. The system that I designed takes these liners and sucks them off of the operators hand and down into a trash can below, eliminating the mess that was caused before. I also designed several flow racks to present the material in better ways to the operators on the line and also got to build these flow racks in the tool room as well. There are many other projects that I worked on over the summer as well, these are just a few but overall it has been a very rewarding experience with a lot of good and challenging projects to work on.

My Summer in JCI Interiors

Matt
Major: Mechanical Engineering I performed a study on the pressure inside of an injection mold during pack. This will allow the tooling department at JCI to better predict which size molding machine door panels will fit in. This can result in more business won by cutting costs to the customer, and more profit since we can put bigger door panels in smaller machines.

Co-op 2: New Product Development

Colton
Major: Mechanical Engineering I helped in the process of a new product launch, which involved creating CAD parts, assemblies and drawings. It also required me to have prototypes constructed and tested in order to verify fit and function. I also worked on a product redesign, which was meant to be a cost savings project for the company.

TBVC co-op rotation 2/3

William
Major: Mechanical Engineering About half of the time I spent working in different departments such as quality lab, chem lab (making rubber), cost estimating and purchasing, assembly, test lab etc. The second half of my internship, I spent taking on the role of a project engineer. I created and followed work orders, and analyzed test data.

Dematic Co-op Term 2

Jillian
Major: Mechanical Engineering As a mechanical application engineer, I was on team that were the middlemen between our R&D department and the customer. Mechanical applications implements all of the product Dematic offers to accommodate the customers needs. We design the layouts of equipment, order all of the things needed, and then go to the job site and ensure everything is working properly before handing it over to the customer.

Third JR Co-op Finishes Strong!

Matthew
Major: Mechanical Engineering This semester I worked in the quoting department at JR Automation. I worked with multiple quotes all in the hundred thousand ranges and a few ranging in a couple million dollars. I worked with some quotes that have come back for a new quote and some that have been passed around without any firm grounding for the most part. Some of the quote I developed concepts from ground up and devised cost worksheets reflecting the anticipated costs plus the margin of gain JR looked to make.

JR Automation 3rd Rotation

Dan
Major: Mechanical Engineering -Design automation machinery based on customer needs using 3D CAD software -Detail and check 2D drawings for manufacturing

UCC Engineering Co-op

Taylor
Major: Mechanical Engineering I worked on industrial projects. Some projects I managed include a cooling water system and a water filtration system among many others. The water filtration system required fluid mechanics calculations and pump system design. I also gained project management skills as I managed the project and the project budget myself.

Engineering Intern

Conlin
Major: Mechanical Engineering Assisted manufacturing, design, quality, and engineering with whatever they needed. This involved mundane tasks such as creating and updating documentation to buying and designing machinery to improve current processes.

Co-op at Koops Inc.

Michael
Major: Mechanical Engineering I worked as a mechanical engineer designing machines. I designed multiple machines for the automotive industry.

Second Semester Engineering Co-op

Austin
Major: Mechanical Engineering I supported the service team, production team, cabinet engineers, refrigeration engineers, and electrical engineers in their everyday tasks. For our engineers, I helped model assemblies in our CAD software, updated refrigeration and electrical schematics, put together bills of materials, released jobs to production, documented engineering/sales changes, and did projects to help improve our processes.

Intern Mechanical Engineer

Mark
Major: Mechanical Engineering My tasks and projects got more difficult as the semester went on. On my first day I was involved in disassembling of some robotic stations, but after that I learned at an accelerated rate. My first project was to create a pneumatic system the would decide if the part went into a bucket of continued down the assembly line. This task seemed overwhelming at first, but after asking some questions and making some mistakes I learned how to complete the task. My projects then got harder. My next project I was assigned was "make the robotic test table work". I had not idea, but after watching the station run and figuring what was causing the issues I was able to correct the problem.

Johnson Controls Manufacturing

Matt
Major: Mechanical Engineering I was an on call manufacturing engineer in one of their major plants in Holland. I solved critical issues on the line that prevented manufacturing and helped to prepare for a launch of a major door panel line. I also was given 3 other lines to manage where I was the sole manufacturing engineer where I had to manage engineering changes, solve issues, and make the jobs of the operators efficient and simple.

Intern Mechanical Engineer for second co-op

Marcus
Major: Mechanical Engineering I was assigned to help start a new project line called the Infineon/Sonoma/IVC part. This part essentially controls the timing of the cams in your car. I started prototyping and slowly began to automate my process through the help of robots, bowl feeder, pneumatics and conveyers.

Mechanical Engineering Co-op term 1: BISSELL

Tony
Major: Mechanical Engineering I worked in product attributes, which meant I was given many different tasks from many different engineers. This was nice from an experience gaining standpoint, because it meant that I got a fairly broad taste of the industry fairly quickly. I did a decent amount of work in Pro-E and ANSYS, and spent a lot of time running tests and helping out with different design projects.

From Sheets of Metal To Finished Product

Husam
Major: Mechanical Engineering I was assigned project manager on some of the main projects that DeWys had at the time I started my co-op. Working as a project manager gave me the opportunity to experience every aspect of a manufacturing company. It improved my understanding to the process from the beginning until the product is finished and shipped to the customer. During my co-op I had many tasks and problems to solve, but basically I was coordinating everything that was going on for the project and ensure problems are solved.

Oliver-Tolas Healthcare Packaging: Second Term

Spencer
Major: Mechanical Engineering I was involved with the installation and qualification of several new pieces of machinery as well as product and process qualifications. This involved a lot of hands-on work performing testing on the new equipment, and a small amount of report/paperwork preparation and routing. Notably, I was responsible for the installation of a radioactively sourced gauging system used to determine the thickness of finished products. This project entailed designing the hardware necessary to mount the system, working with Plant Services to make the appropriate preparations for installation, and working with the device manufacturer's Engineer to install and set-up the system. Beyond this, I was responsible for all of the testing necessary to demonstrate the devices functionality and report my findings to my superiors.

Mechanical Engineering Internship

Jake
Major: Mechanical Engineering On any typical day, I was exposed to constructing drawings, Bill of Materials, setup sheets, process management, prominent customer interaction, developing presentations, and answering floor workers questions.

Trane BAS Internship

David
Major: Mechanical Engineering I had the opportunity to work on graphics for each job. Through the use of Photoshop, I created floor plans, where I then inserted the components, such as air handlers, VAVs, heaters, and coils. The components of the air handlers and water systems were also created in Photoshop, which would be later used as the basis for the building controls in Summit and SC automation.

BISSELL co-op 2nd Term

Tony
Major: Mechanical Engineering I was given two large projects to work on this term, and was given more control of the projects than I was in my first term. The two projects involved a lot of statics knowledge, along with CAD design, and a little bit of dynamics/fluids understanding.

NSE Product Engineering

Caitlyn
Major: Mechanical Engineering I worked on two of the high-speed NSE drills, the Core-U Drill and the Sumex Drill. Both drills contained rotor issues in which solutions were implemented. The Core-U Drill rotor contained an issue during the assembly of the balance rotor. When the front balancing ring, which is the last component pressed onto the rotor assembly, was pressed, a bur would form due to the misalignment. The front balancing ring was a softer material than the rotor; as a result, a majority of the bur's material was from the front balancing ring. This bur was being formed 30% of the time, causing a slip fit bearing to be unable to be placed onto the rotor for balancing. One this occurred, the entire order would need to be placed into rework until the situation was corrected. My project was to develop and test solutions that would reduce and hopefully eliminate the bur formation issue. Throughout this project, I worked in Minitab and Pro-E to develop DOEs and Rotor Assembly Blanks for testing. There are two possible rotor changes and three possible front balancing ring changes. For the two styles of rotors, a chamfer of 75 degrees was added for the first style, and a radius of 0.0035 for the second. For the front balancing ring, a vibratory finish, Loctite 680, and a combination of the two were added to the different styles. A total of 12 combinations were tested, including the control group. These test results provided feasible solutions for preventing the problem in the future. The Sumex Drill was the highest scrap and warranty product of the NSE division. For this project, I was required to discover and implement a solution to fix one of the larger drill issues. After looking at the complaint trending information and the fishbone diagram that I created, I was able to find that there was a large number of complaints involving the balanced rotor assembly. The rotor shaft drive groove would contain an increased depth after repeated use of the routers with the footed attachments. The rotor shaft drive groove is the area where the rotor comes into contact with the router when a footed attachment was used. The router in the attachment was a harder material than the rotor causing the rotor material to compress form to the shape of the router's contact end. This increased depth created an increased gap between the router and the footed attachments, which impended the craniotomy that was going to be performed. In order to solve this issue, a carbide plug was added to the rotor shaft drive groove area. This solution was found through research performed by the new product development department. For this change Pro-E and PTC Change Request systems were used. I created the changes that were required in the rotor and worked on creating a fixture for the carbide plug to be pressed into the rotor in Pro-E. I also began a Change Request in the PTC system.

First Co-Op Semester At Innotec Corporation

Matthew
Major: Mechanical Engineering The vast majority of my semester experience was focused on learning production and running the production lines (being machine responsible). I was machine responsible for an average of over 30 hours per week for the semester. The responsibilities associated with this were keeping production running no matter if it involved the clearing a simple error to tearing apart a station to replace a component which had ceased to function properly. My next biggest daily responsibility was being in charge of ordering spare parts and parts needed for production line changes or improvements. This was very challenging since most orderable parts used on the machines were not documented and required research and price comparisons before ordering. The remainder of my time was spent working on projects to help improve the production process. Some of these are listed and briefly described below: Circuit Press Oil System: Updated current automatic oiling system, rewired panel, and updated company logic based software. Finished Goods Stacker Extension: Finished goods tote auto-stacker was extended to allow for more tote capacity. Along with this the entire E-stop system was rewired and updated. Finished Goods Stacker Re-alignment: The rails used for stacking the finished totes needed adjustment to prevent failures for totes both entering and leaving the system. Line Capability Improvements: A second Power/Reset/Go setup was added to production lines along with a second monitor and mouse station. This allowed for faster machine failure fixes by eliminating the need to walk around the production line to restart a machine. Additional Printer & Label Redesign: A printer was added to the production area so that label printing could be performed without the need for walking back and forth across the plant. Along with this change, a complete label redesign was needed for functionality with a new program. Various Small Tasks: Changes to the company based machine logic software, addition of sensors, and other small engineering changes were made throughout the semester in order to improve production capacity and time between machine failures.

Best Mechanical Internship

Erik
Major: Mechanical Engineering Got to be a part of a machine design team that takes requirements and specifications from customers and create machine solutions for them in CAD. I have gotten to experience starting small projects and working by myself but also being part of a group for greater projects. My work has involved 3D design in CAD, checking other designers work for errors and mistakes. Also gotten the opportunity to work with builders and make modifications on existing machines.

TBVC first rotation co-op

William
Major: Mechanical Engineering TBVC implemented a great co-op program for me in which I worked in each department before becoming an engineer. I started molding and assembling parts to get a good understanding of the fabrication process. I then worked in the test lab to better understand the different types of tests that can be performed. I finished the semester working in the chemical lab where all the rubber is produced. This is my first of three semesters at TBVC and I will begin design projects my next semester.