Experience Matters - Grand Valley State University

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Trans-Matic Engineering

Benjamin
Major: Mechanical Engineering I was tasked with making sure the tooling drawings were up to date. I also spent half the semester on gage design. Gages are used to make sure the incredibly intricate parts are accurate to within 1/1000 of an inch.

GVSU 3rd and Final Co-op W15' Semester

Cody
Major: Mechanical Engineering During the current semester I completed tasks related to advanced product development and product engineering. At Magna Mirrors in Holland I work mainly with the Inside Mirrors Division. I was involved with some design work and prototyping for the development of new products. I would often be asked to make prototype mirrors either for testing or customer samples. I was also involved with Root Cause Analysis for determining the root causes of problems with specific products. There were some projects that required designing fixtures or components using SolidWorks software, that would aid in the testing, development and manufacturing of products. I often would work with engineering staff to maintain programs: DFMEA's, DVP's, BOM's, benchmarking, design review checklist, tolerance stacks, drawing GD&T, DFM/DFA checklists and any other specified requirements.

Second Co-Op At Innotec

Matthew
Major: Mechanical Engineering The majority of my time was spent being production responsible. This entitled startup, shutdown, correcting machine stoppages, correcting machine errors, assisting manual process personnel, assembling boxes, cleaning the area, filling materials for production, reworking in process production parts, IMM tool changes, IMM cover changes, quality checks, and a whole other number of day to day issues. When not being production responsible my two other main tasks were to monitor internal scrap / rework and spare parts levels. The scrap / rework responsibilities included formulating reports for the daily, three day, weekly, and monthly numbers, doing all rework for product that was unable to pass manual inspection, and alerting team members of any spikes or changes in internal scrap / rework. The spare parts responsibilities was very straight forward. I was responsible for reordering any spare parts used in the day to day operations of the production area. I was also responsible for researching any parts needed for projects being done by fellow area members. I was responsible for getting the best price possible and keeping needed parts on hand. I would have also like to re-organize and set up a tracking system for the spare part storage areas, but this was not possible due to the large amount of production and other responsibilities. The remainder of my time was spent fixing daily problems that occurred with production machines. I worked on a number of items through out the course of the semester: - Bezel IMM Feeder - Housing IMM Feeder - Housing Circuit Pick And Place - Housing Part Feeder Bowl Improvements - Housing LED Install Improvements - Bezel Feeder - Bezel Finished Product Tote Stacker - Reflector Scrap Track - Circuit Die - Making new production and area announcement boards All of these "projects" were small items that were only addressed when production was stopped or interrupted as a result of that particular station being broken or malfunctioning. Some other small improvements dealt with wiring and fixing transfer problems. Overall, production was far more important and took priority over everything else.

Part of the team

Evan
Major: Mechanical Engineering Ran production, designed tooling and new additions to the machine line.

Gentex Co-Op Round 2

Andrew
Major: Mechanical Engineering I worked in the glass bending department, the beginning of the process to complete an exterior electrochromic mirror. The vast majority of the manufacturing line components are designed by engineers at Gentex, and that lends itself to a lot of flexibility for future design improvements. I was given several projects to redesign a current component in the process, or design a completely new fixture in the case of additional safety or process count checks. I was also able to complete a previously started project of doing a tool redesign in the device that we use to level our glass bending process. I was able to update the design and technology used to take what was once a 4 hour process to one nearly half as long.

Environmental Engineering Internship

Nathan
Major: Mechanical Engineering I have performed groundwater modeling using computer programs such as Visual MODFLOW, Surfer 10, ArcMap, and EVAP. I have completed evaluations using the MDEQ's online Water Withdrawal Assessment Tool (WWAT). I also have conducted multiple wastewater treatment projects, and performed groundwater and surface water sampling.

2nd Co/op at Autocam

Brandi
Major: Mechanical Engineering I worked with the engineers on process improvements and quality issues.

EGR 390 Co-op Experience

Matt
Major: Mechanical Engineering Throughout the semester I worked closely with technicians and Engineers to help develop parts through the prototype phase of development.

Process Support Engineer

Derek
Major: Mechanical Engineering Most of my semester was spent managing and supporting final assembly production lines. The tasks I performed required leadership, management of resources, and social and technical skills. When off the production floor, I worked on several continuous improvement projects and was able to implement them on the production lines during the time I was here.

Innotec - Visors

Zachary
Major: Mechanical Engineering While working in JVP covers, a cell which made visor covers, I completed projects, both large and small. I worked on a device that removed the pins from scrapped parts so that the remaining plastic part could be used as regrind in another cell's process. I also got experience working on controls in order to optimize the molding process, as well as streamlining the process.

2nd Co-Op Semester

Robert
Major: Mechanical Engineering I assisted with the launch of a laser cutting machine that was design to cut steel pieces to size. I completed tasks relating to controls, programming, mechanical design and debug, and machine prove out for launch.

Engineering Co-Op - Innotec Corporation

Matthew
Major: Mechanical Engineering The majority of my tasks focused on production of parts. I spent and average of 35 hours plus per week being responsible for production. This entailed everything from organizing incoming materials, organizing outgoing materials, filling materials needed for production, taking out scrap from production, cleaning up production areas, doing change overs between production models, fixing issues with production, and all other aspects of making products. The remainder of my time was spent in meetings, ordering spare parts for my group, tracking internal scrap and rework parts, and preparing for the monthly divisional competition. The amount of time spent on engineering tasks was negligible.