Jedco Inc. Internship

I finally got to make and edit Operation sketches. Since the side walls are symmetric, I was able to do my first op sketches off of other ones and just mirror them. The sketches took all the work I had been doing and put it together. I used excel sheets to match the symmetric parts. I also used the search form I made to find the tools and files I needed to take drawings of. I used my practice in Inventor to navigate the model of the side wall and make drawings of the parts I needed. Inventor also helped me ensure I was taking the symmetric parts. Once I had the drawings I was able to put them into the op sketches and use my practice in AutoCAD to make the drawings look neat and organized as well as put dimensions on my drawings for reference. This was helpful because I got to know the processes used while solidifying my practiced techniques. It was especially helpful because I was able to compare mine to other drawings for reference because it was my first time.

I made a map of the assemblies on the Side Wall project today. It took me pretty much all day because of how massive the project is. The map had drawings and lists of parts in each assembly so I got comfortable using AutoCAD and Inventor to make drawings which are how the process engineer puts drawings onto the Operation Sketches. This was a good experience because I got very comfortable making drawings and navigating AutoCAD to make drawings. The tree had the 100 level assembly, which is the whole side wall assembly. That branched out to the 200 level sub-assemblies. On the side wall, there are 29 sub-assemblies that I had to make drawings and lists for. Each of those sub-assemblies had at least one 300 level part that had to branch out further. Needless to say, this was a very large project. I'm happy I can make something that will have such an impact. Projects like this one are how I'm starting to understand Lean engineering and the 5s philosophy.

I finished my dashboard and the search form worked smoothly. I'm happy with my work and what I can add to my resume so far. Immediately after that, my co-workers gave me some more to add to my resume. Tyler assigned me to organize operation sketches and make some new drawings of parts for the op sketches. The project I'm working on is two mirrored side walls so the op sketches for the second wall, need to be retaken. This is a good learning opportunity because I can see all the drawings that have already been done for the first wall I just have to imitate them, mirrored. I will now be able to say I've worked on ops sketches for process engineering and organizing large projects on excel with VBA, using a user search form to keep the data concise and neat for the user. So far, my internship has been very successful and I'm happy to be doing it.

I finished all my work on the individual search forms in excel for each department of my team. Since I got them working all smoothly, the one-stop-shop type dashboard was passed to me to create. It will have links to each individual form, get the data from them so you can see everything in one place. This dashboard will be what I leave with the team with my name on it. There are a lot of challenges that I had to overcome immediately; how to get updated data from other forms, how to search through it neatly, and how to organize the dashboard. I spent a lot of my day organizing my ideas for it and researching how to access data from other forms. This type of stuff is what Microsoft access is for so the hardest part will be hardcoding the function of Microsoft access into Microsoft Excel. I'm excited to create something of my own for the team.

Today I got to learn more about assemblies in Autodesk Inventor, the CAD software. The team I'm working on has an assembly model with all the parts they are manufacturing for Pratt and Whitney so once I got to the assembly section of the excel sheet I had to isolate parts and put together the assembly in cad instead of just finding one part and taking a screenshot. This was the first time I had worked with assemblies in CAD instead of just parts. I had a lot of problems at first. I was using the wrong shortcuts, opening more parts than I meant to, and navigating the blueprint to know which parts to select was also confusing. Figuring out the blueprint was the first solution. I read through the print to understand the levels of the assembly before I continued learning the program. Then once I was comfortable with what I had to do, I did my research about the program and found a very easy way to hide pieces of the model so I could only see what I needed for the screenshots. Once I

There exists no perfect environment and, as an engineer, it is made my goal to make a perfect environment. I made the first sheet I was working on work. Since I worked out the bugs on that one and improved the functionality I got an explanation of the 5s system and Toyotas Lean engineering philosophy to understand the impact of what I was doing. The Lean system and the 5s system are philosophies that all good engineering companies hold which say the organization of work and the standardization upfront pay off astronomically in the long run. Tyler, who I work with did his thesis on the last company he worked at about implementing Lean engineering, and the impact of it on the company because the company didn't hold the philosophy at all. Tyler determined that the company could save $50,000 a year by organizing workspaces, purchasing tools for each workspace instead of making the production team walking across the plant when they need a new tool on each assembly. Needless to say, th

I learned more than I ever thought I would need to know about Excel. I learned how to add and lookup pictures with a user search function that my boss was trying to set up. Since I was the one that figured it out I had to fix the spreadsheet and put all the pictures in on a 200-row spreadsheet which was the downside of showing off my programming skills. Once I was labeled as the excel engineer, my boss asked if I link and look up files in the system. There were also jokes about voice command and the spreadsheet talking back after the pictures took me a whole day. Excel was the extent of my day today, which sounds very boring. However, I was very happy with myself because I got to see where the important time-saving functions come in and I can now add proficient with excel to my resume which will be very helpful in my future. One of the guys on my team is a process engineer who wrote his thesis on saving time with things like this excel spreadsheet lookup function. As he explained t

Today I learned a lot more about organization and documentation. Mark, my program manager, has an excel dashboard program that he uses to easily look up pieces and projects. He can look up jobs by Jedco's part number, the partner's part number, or the part's find number. It gives him back a lot of information about the part including tools used in the process, cost, quote, profit margins, and issues and comments. On one of the parts he was looking it up but none of the information was being brought back. So, in an effort to learn an important skill for engineering jobs and jobs in general, I taught myself Visual Basic, the language behind Excel formulas. At the end of the tutorial I was skimming and after about two hours of reading the code behind Mark's dashboard, I couldn't find any errors so I asked the person who wrote the code about the references and some clarifications about the code just to make sure I was clear on everything. At the end of it all, we realiz

I got introduced to everyone today. I was immediately thankful for this opportunity as everyone was so nice and welcoming. I learned so much in one day. I will be working on the f-119 engine which goes in the f-22 raptor and the f-135 engine for the f-35 fighter jet. They are both incredible planes and as such take incredible process engineering and modeling to produce. I sat in on a meeting that gave me a look into the aerospace industry immediately. Because the whole plant is under ITAR regulations documentation is extremely important. Also, because aerospace engineering comes down to the ten-thousandth of an inch, communication is key. The meeting consisted of a project manager and a lead modeler on the project going through a 100 row excel spreadsheet updating customer expectations and concerns that have surfaced about the Blue Prints. I got to tour the plant and meet a lot of people today and as I was amazed by the machines and parts that were being made, the thing that stood

I have known I wanted to be an engineer for a long time. I enjoy problem-solving and have always had excellent spatial reasoning. I began tinkering at a young age with old computers and RC cars. At 11 I ruined one of my RC cars trying to drive it on water. I was still so happy because it skimmed on water for a good three seconds before the frame caught and dragged it down. The only failure was not sealing off the electronics well enough but I was so happy to have done something without a kit or instructions. It was all around fun. I kept going with legos, robots, computer programs, I got to know my way around a wood shop freshmen year and learned about 3d printing and machine guided cutting from CNC machining to laser cutting. As I leave for college I feel completely prepared to tackle any engineering challenge that comes my way. I have a strong base in math and calculus that can only grow in the years to come. And an even stronger base of experience with tinkering and making things.