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Josh’s Quotes #19

[88-100] I think I had difficulty with Solid Edge because it was probably the biggest project I think I’ve worked on in my time. I was given a drawing that was made in 2000 of what’s called a discharge ring. It’s a roughly 140-inch diameter ring that goes out at the bottom of the turbine as the water is discharged, hence the name. I had to model the whole thing. Without getting too intricate, the way it was modeled has to follow a guideline by the company. Of course, this is in an effort to make it more standardized and make it easier for people to look back on what was done moving forward. Because I had to do it a certain way, it took a little longer. Then, when there were issues, I would have to lean on my co-workers to help me.

The company actually assigned me a mentor. I meet with him weekly to discuss anything I’m working on, any questions I have. He usually tells me a few things just in general about powerhouses. He’s like, “I remembered this thing that happened, and I wanted to share it with you.” I can go to him anytime.Then, we also have certain people in the office who are, it’s called key users. One of my co-workers was the key user for Solid Edge. He was the person who taught me how to use it, led me to the tutorials that I had to complete. Then when I had questions, he was most of the time, the person I went to.

[134-157] I should clarify, the discharge ring […] When I say design project, I mean in the sense that I have creative input into how it is designed. With the discharge ring, I was given a drawing and they said, “It’s got to be the same, so make it.” Then I had to use the existing drawing to make a drawing with the right dimensions. But with the design project, one of the types of turbines has blades that can rotate. Inside the hub of the blades there are links that move with the motor to cause the rotation. In assemblies, these links themselves can weigh about 200 pounds. The problem becomes, what you have to do is you have the shaft that the blade is on and then you have a shaft that you have to connect the links with. Basically, you put the pin through the links and then you have to set the links somewhere so that you can put the next pin through. Because they’re obviously pretty heavy, you can’t just hold them with your hand. We don’t want to let them just rest on the parts because they could cause damage and it’s a very tight tolerance. What we need is something that can hold the links up. What was already in process was the design for what they call the link holder. Where it takes two holes that bolt in on the outside of the hub. Then, it’s basically shaped like an L and you have a stud of sorts coming out of it to […] It’s just a screw, a soft screw so that it doesn’t maybe dent the metal on the link, and then the link just sits on it. I mean, I can talk about it more. There’s a lot more to it. But basically, I was given the design that we had, I was given a list of concerns and what to do about them. I was given also some specific things like, “We need this to be changed to this.” Then I came up with some ideas on how to change it.

After talking to my co-worker who gave me the project and then going to his supervisor who the project is for, they both liked the idea and they said I could roll with it. Along the way, they helped me with the actual modeling and figuring out how I could make what I wanted to make, and giving me tips. If I have my design, they said, “Well, we really liked this design. Here’s something that we’d like you to roll with, with your design and tell us how it turns out.”

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Josh’s Quotes #20

[162-182] Unfortunately, we were getting towards the final stages of modeling right when I had to go home because of COVID-19. Basically, what we had done is, I want to say, counting from the first design I was given, I think there were probably one, two, three, maybe four more designs before we landed on the final design. Some of them were my designs, some of them were my co-workers design. But a lot of it was, we sat down together, and we said, “Would this be a good idea? Yes or no, maybe. Let’s try it.”

I made what’s called an involute profile, which is usually the profile of a gear tooth. To do that, it takes some complicated geometry and it’s not something that I could do by hand, it’s not something you can calculate. It took us a while to figure out how to do this because we were basically designing a gear from scratch. A lot of complex curves and faces and we weren’t really sure where to go. It took about two or three weeks to get that figured out. I should add, this wasn’t a priority project, so it didn’t get a lot of time. I had a lot of projects they were giving me and said, “We need this this week.” This is what’s called modularization, so it’s desired to make our lives easier. But after the design, like I said, we were coming close to finishing the modeling. We had figured out, “All right, this model is good. Everything should work the way we wanted it to. Let’s double check a few things and then we can start putting it on a drawing.”

Then once we have a drawing, we send it out to a company that’s going manufacture it for us and send it right to us. Like I said, unfortunately we didn’t get to actually finish it. But the co-worker that I was working with it on, I’m close to and he did tell me, we had a conversation before I left and I told him, I said, “If you guys figure out what you need here and you’re going to finish it, just do it. Don’t wait for me because I don’t know when I’ll be back.” But they did express their thanks with the project. It felt like my input was appreciated and my time.

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Josh’s Quotes #21

[468-495] For the most part, I had positive experiences with the people at work. However, I also worked with an individual who wasn’t as helpful as others. For the discharge ring, I worked with, not a lead engineer, but I think he’s an engineer too. But he’s a lot older than me. He’s probably in his late 50s. He might even be 60. I’m not sure. But that’s very different than talking to my mentor who’s five years older than me. There are times when I was doing that, like when I was modeling this discharge ring, I kept running into problems because I didn’t know the software. I wasn’t sure if I was doing this math right or something, and I would go to him. Sometimes I’d go to him and most of the time he’d be like, “Just do this and that.” It was very easy said and done. But sometimes I would say something and he’s like, “It’s pretty simple. You just got to figure it out.” It was times like that where I got frustrated because I’m like, “Well, I’m kind of asking for help. I don’t think I’d ask if I didn’t need it. It’s obviously not that simple.” But that’s one thing. Like I said, that wasn’t all the time. It was just sometimes.

But then I did have interactions with my mentor. There were a lot of other people that were around that age that were hired around the same time. When talking to them, it’s a lot more nonchalant. They sit down and they want to have a conversation with me as well as do the work or tell me what I need to do. We have Skype for Business in the office. I can send them a message or I can walk to their desk or I can send them an email. But I mean, sometimes we have a conversation on Skype. I might text them and be like, “How do I do this?” They’ll tell me and then they’ll say something and maybe I’ll make a joke and we’ll have a back and forth while we’re working. I don’t know. But it varied a lot. I had both ends of the spectrum. I had, “You’re a kid. I’m an adult. Let’s be sure that you’re the intern here.” Not in a sense I felt like, “Man, I got to get out of here.” Just I was like, “All right, you just got to stick up your butt and I’m just going to do my job anyway.” But I had that end and I had the end of the spectrum where the people were willing to be patient and learn with me.

There were some things where we had a problem and I was able to figure it out. Or I found something in Solid Edge for example. There was a shortcut button. I don’t remember what it did, but I found it and I started using it. The keys user for Solid Edge was like, “I didn’t even know you could do that.” He’s like, “That’s really interesting.” He’s like, “I’m going to remember that.” A lot of spectrums, I guess, crossed in the interactions with my co-workers.

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Josh’s Quotes #22

[500-526] When I experienced difficulties with the lead engineer, at first, I would kind of just go back to my desk, look at it again, and then I’d have to go to a different co-worker. Because if I can’t figure it out and I got to get it done, and I have to do something. I would tell him, I’d be like, “Yeah, I asked him this and this is what he said.” They would give me … If they could, they’d say, “Well, let’s try this and see if that works.” Or they would go and ask him themselves after they tried it and they couldn’t fix it. That happened.

But we had another project, I was working with the same guy and it was the same powerhouse. It’s a part that’s attached to the discharge ring, but a different model, a different drawing. I was looking at the drawing he gave me and I made a model and then I made a drawing, and the dimensions didn’t match up. Yet when I checked it, everything should have been correct. Then I found that there were […] I kept trying to change the models. I changed a lot of things and then I sat down and I did the math again. I realized that there were dimensions on the drawing that either the way they were rounded or the way they were put on the drawing, they conflicted. They weren’t possible dimensions to make what was on the drawing. In that case, when I started having issues, I didn’t want to go to him right away because I knew I was probably going to get a, “Figure it out.”

I went to my co-worker and he looked at it and I told him, I was like, “I’m not going to go to him first. I want to make sure this is wrong before I say something.” He took a look at it himself. I did those calculations. I took a lot of pictures exactly where the problems were. I just went up to him and I started to tell him, I was like, “Look, I’m …” I kind of mentioned it before and I had gotten the like, “Use this dimension.” He told me, “Use this dimension and it’ll work out.” Now that it didn’t, I told him, I was like, “I’m still having trouble with this.” He’s like, “Well, you just got to look at the drawing and make sure the …” I don’t know exactly what he said. But basically, the thing that I didn’t want to hear. I kind of said, I was like, “I tried that, but actually I found this.” Then I told him and showed him what I found. Then he was like, “Let me take a look at it.” In 30 minutes, he was like, “Just do this instead.” Thinking back, it’s just a waste of time. I don’t think I […] I shouldn’t probably have to have those interactions. I shouldn’t have to make a case just to ask a question. But most of my co-workers I could just go to and they would fix it right away or help me right away. But with him I had to really make my case and double check that I wasn’t incorrect when I went to go ask him my questions.

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Joy on Choosing Engineering

[25-31; 32-39] The build season for robotics is six weeks from the first week of January to the second week in February. You have six weeks to construct an industry-grade robot that will complete a challenge. For example, one year we build our robot to play soccer and another year we built the robot to shoot frisbees and climb a pyramid made from piping in the center of the field. These robots are five feet tall and one hundred and twenty pounds. The design process involved reading through the manual that NASA and FIRST distributed to each team. We had to engineer everything. We made CAD models of it, built a prototype, and programmed it.

[37-39; 43-47] During my junior year of high school, I was able to take off two months of schooling because I was homeschooled and moved it to June through August. When I was in build season, I put in a hundred hours a week, for six weeks, in robotics. And we ended up making it to the world competition that year. It paid off and I learned so much from my mentors (engineers and computer scientists) and just like my other peers and like working in the engineering process from like start to finish. It’s amazing. Going through it five times, definitely helped me now in college. But, yeah. So, I accredit my ability to engage in robotics that much to being home schooled.

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Joy’s Quotes #3

[139; 163-169; 173-184; 186-192] During my third semester, I participated in a job shadow related to my dream job. I found out about the opportunity through someone in my robotics team. One of the other students there has a family friend who mentioned that their parents had gotten in a car accident and were going through the process of getting prosthetics because there had to be amputated. And I was like, “Wow, that’s crazy.” But also, of like, “Can you tell me a little bit more about the prosthetics that they’re getting?” And so, the lady is very engaged in helping people, like college students than high school students pursue their goals, and so she immediately plugged me into the prosthetists and the head engineer at the company, at ‘national orthotic and prosthetic company’. And she contacted him and gave me his email address and all of that. And we set up a meeting time.

During my job shadow, he was able to fix something on his patients’ leg and put it back on their leg and they were able to walk out. And he ended up saying that I could come back as many times as I wanted. It was a positive experience. I’m also interested in working with robotics and prosthetics within production lines. I can’t intern with the company where I job shadowed, because you need a medical degree to work or you need the full degree to intern with him. But I hope to get an internship with the company that supplies the manufacture-able parts that they make. So not the custom-made part that fits onto the limb, but like the joints, the knee and the foot and the calf and just other parts of the prosthetics that can be manufactured. They said that they’re looking for interns, so I’m hoping that that I will be able to work there this summer.

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Joy’s Quotes #4

[643-660] I remember my cousins husband talking to me about his work when I was little. Sort of pretending that he’s not talking to himself by talking to a two year old so, growing up I was like, “I will literally never understand any of this.” Then coming back from college I’m like, “Oh, I do actually know what you mean when you’re talking about loops and other basic programming things, and just in general the thought process of going through a project from start to finish.”

Also, last summer, I was able to present the solar cell testing system that I created for the satellite. My part on the satellite was the solar cells and testing them for mass production, because the company that I was working for was trying to output 100 satellites that summer. Very small satellites and so I needed to test over 2000 solar cells because there were 20 solar panels per satellite, and my dad told some of his co-workers about what I was doing and they ended up setting up a meeting for me to come in because they wanted to see what I was working on. Which was crazy because, I don’t know, I guess I just always thought of all those people that work in cubicles as, I don’t know, just like they’re very cool and then I get there and they’re laughing, and they’re having fun and I’m like, “Oh, these are real people.”

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Joy’s Quotes #9

[486-490] Also, I was offered a job with the company that I built the satellite with last summer, and they offered me a second internship. I said no because that would’ve been the third summer that I had worked in space and my goal is to go into mechanical with possibly the end goal being biomedical. Maybe get my master’s and become a prosthetist but definitely manufacturing engineering, I love that. I don’t want to build satellites.

[512-515; 522-526] I decided to work for a small company, again, but I think that it will be a good fit. I will be working with the CAD models and helping them do the grunt work on the CAD models and then also working with some of their engineers on prototypes because this is a new developing product. I had a connection from my robotics team when I was in high school. One of the mentors is one of the engineers of this company now. He was just hired and so he recommended me for this job which I knew robotics would pay off, and not just learning how to use a tape measure, but actually having connections that will get me jobs in the future.

[552-555] So I’m, I guess encouraged now that I’m at the end of the second year that I have a job that I’ve lined up, and that it’s something that I think I’m going to enjoy because the other part of it is last semester scared me into thinking, “Not only are you possibly not good enough but you don’t like this at all. This is miserable.”

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Joy’s Quotes #11

[97-103] When I was in high school, I was on a robotics team. One of my mentors from there works at a company that designs vehicles. He remembered me and offered to let me work there as an intern for summer, cause he thought that I would be a good fit. My job involved some designing, as well as working with the assembly technicians to sort of implement the stuff that I was making. It was definitely small-scale designing for me. The company had about 14 employees. So, it was a small company.

[104-110] They make disaster relief vehicles. They weigh between 15 and 50 thousand pounds, depending on which attachments you put on them. The vehicle that I worked on over the summer that we actually shipped out had a 30-ton forklift on the front. Yeah. Sorry. It didn’t weigh 30 tons. It could lift that much weight. It was massive. I have never seen a forklift that big. I didn’t even know that the actual forks themselves were wider than my body. It was very weird and quite tall.

[111-116] Anyway. And it had six German automobile company battery packs. So, those are the size of a twin-sized bed. And so, those go inside. I think those go inside of vehicles that the German automobile company makes, but it’s definitely not the cars, cause a car battery is small. But, anyway, so, that was that. And then, a dump bed and a scissor lift on it. And so, that was sent to the west coast and it helps with their port.

[117-122] But there’s also ones that we’re looking into sending to an orchard that will harvest apples and other things and spread chemicals over whatever the trees they need fertilizers. So, it’s a very diverse purpose for each one of the vehicles. They’re kind of expensive, like a million dollars each. You can buy this vehicle, and then, add attachments.

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Joy’s Quotes #14

[123-128] Anyway. So, I spent the majority of my summer either working with the assembly technicians, attaching decals and running wiring harnesses. Let’s see. What else? Attaching minor hinges and doors, panels on there. As well as, I designed a forklift control panel. So, all the levers that you would need for the joystick.

[129-136] It was really fun. I was sent the dimensions for men and women from the first percentile to 99th percentile. Then, based on those dimensions, I had to design my system based on the radius that someone’s wrist, both men and women, from, I think fifth percentile to 80th percentile. I think that’s what I had to design it for, from wrist rotation to fingertip, because there were four triggers. So, that was the main project I worked on and it was a success. We put it onto one of our units. And, because each vehicle’s personalized, they probably won’t need it again unless somebody wants a forklift. But, yeah, it was so cool.

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