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Click here to return to this month's Article Index The Cutting Edge™ July 2005Education & ScholarshipWMMA Scholarship Student Wraps up Summer of Learning at Accu-RouterBy Marcus Johnson, Tennessee Technological University, Accu-Router Summer Intern The internship at Accu-Router that I have just completed has been a great experience for me. When I started here at the beginning of the summer I was pretty nervous because, even though I had been through a fourteen month co-op with John Deere, I still felt as though I had not done any "real" engineering work. With a few exceptions, my duties at Deere consisted mainly of doing time studies and other mundane types of data collection and data entry. My experience at Accu-Router has been totally different. The first day I started I was given a list of projects ranging from research to design that I was expected to complete within two months. They were all challenging in their own way and two of them in particular required me to be pretty creative. For the first one, I was asked to come up with a small conveyor system integrated into the table that would help material onto and off of the table. It was difficult enough to find conveyor components that were compact and powerful enough to suit this application, but the conveyor system also had to have the ability to raise and lower itself. I was able to solve this problem by using pneumatic cylinders and recessing the conveyor system within the table, and I am pretty confidant that it will work. The second project was to work on a support frame for the table that would allow the table to be made thinner and result in substantial weight reduction as well as, hopefully, cost reduction. I based my design off of work done by a senior design project group from Tennessee Tech University. The design team had come up with the basic layout of the frame, but I had to perform calculations to select the correct aluminum structure size and shape, as well as make modifications to the layout for the attachment of the drive, mechanical stop, etc. I enjoyed these two projects the most, because they gave me a chance to be creative and it was the first time that I used some of the things that I learned in school on the job. One of the biggest things they taught me is that you always have to keep cost in mind as you are working on a design. You might come up with the coolest new thingamajig anybody has ever seen, but it will not do you any good if you can not afford to build it. These projects also gave me an idea of what being a design engineer would be like and I enjoyed it. I think I learned more here in two months than I did on my previous fourteen month co-op. I was able to learn a lot about machine design and I also was able to spend some time out in the shop. I had always wanted to learn how to use metal shop tools and the guys who work in the spindle room showed me how to build a spindle, taught me about bearing preloads, taught me how to use a lathe, and helped me gain a better understanding of how electric motors work. I also learned the benefits of working in a small company. It gives you a lot more chances to get out in the shop and get your hands dirty, and it is pretty nice to be able to go to work and know everybody's name. In conclusion, I am very grateful that I was given the WMMA scholarship and was given the opportunity to intern at Accu-Router. Besides helping to pay for school, the internship has given me a lot of practical experience that I believe will give me a leg up on the competition as I enter the work force. To learn more about the WMMA Education & Scholarship Program, visit the Committee's webpage at www.wmma.org/members/edu_comm.cfm. WMMA Members can create their OWN scholarship program! To view a synopsis of how you can use our program to benefit your company, click here www.wmma.org/members/secureDocument.cfm?docID=300. Table of Contents
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