Siemens electric
— MECHANICAL ENGINEER INTERN —
I worked at Siemens Electric as a CO-OP in the summer and fall of 2016. During that time I assisted manufacturing and maintenance doing engineering work as well as fabrication. Most notably, I designed two lifting mechanisms for specific operations in the plant.
First Lifting Mechanism
The first design project was turning a small JLG portable man lift into a lifting device for control panel lids. To do this, I took the man basket of of the lift and designed a lifting arm to fit in its place. Then, I wired a Dewalt drill to a 3 position switch with one position off, one position forward, and the last position reverse. I mounted the drill to the lift in place of where the operator would have used the drill originally. Now all an operator has to do to perform a lid lift is hook each corner of the lid up and flip a switch. This device was built with leftover parts from other jobs and is still in use to this day.
Second Lifting Mechanism
The second design project I had was a lift to move angle iron and a bottle of gas into a small space in the frame of the breakers. This was a much more complicated project because the angle iron and gas bottle were over the weight limit of the operators and the lift had to be self powered so it could be utilized all over the plant. The end result was a hybrid system that used an electric winch to control the up and down, and a pneumatic system to control the tilt of the angle iron. I also made a docking station to charge up the electric and pneumatic systems so the lift was always ready to perform its task.
