Experience Matters - Grand Valley State University

Co-op at JCI / Visteon

Chris
Major: Electrical Engineering Performed numerous tests on a Model Year 16 Head-Up Display. Wrote multiple programs for testing interfaces and some smaller programs to perform calculations. Made a printed circuit board (PCB) for splitting video between a source and the HUD. Participated in testing on a Model Year 14 instrument cluster. Designed an interface to run a Display Color Analyzer remotely.

Magnum Engineering

Jesse
Major: Electrical Engineering This semester I designed a device for our shop that monitored the water flowing into our washing machine. This device consisted of an LCD, push-button/rotary encoder user interface, and a micro-controller. I also did some testing of existing products for a local fish trolling motor company and created a way of scoring their products in a concrete manner. The last project that I worked on was a wireless device that could control the volume of the music in the shop. This was needed because there was no easy way to turn the volume down when customers came for visits. So a wireless remote and audio in-line base were designed to meet these needs.

Electrical Engineering Internship

Alex
Major: Electrical Engineering The department I worked with for this co-op was the advanced product development department. I performed a variety of tests on different parts for benchmarking and general research. I also worked with other engineers to design and construct various parts for testing and innovation.

Engineering Co-op

Neal
Major: Electrical Engineering My work focused on assisting in maintaining the company's building monitoring system. I also spent a great deal of time doing office work and assisting in work that needed to be done by coworkers.

Controls Engineer

Nathan
Major: Electrical Engineering This semester I researched weld gas controllers and how we could communicate to a programmable logic controller when the weld gas controller faults. I also added a touch screen to interface with a plc on a massive hydraulic press that will change the shutoff point pressure. Other than those two projects I did a bit of print work and ordering parts.

Great experience at Gill Electronics!

Luke
Major: Electrical Engineering The main project I was tasked to do this semester was to create an evaluation receiver for companies to be able to evaluate our wireless charging products. It involved a series of buttons, programming, tuning a resonator, and designing the schematics and circuit boards. It was a success! Another project I have been doing this semester is creating an End-of-Line test program for the manufacturers to test the product when it is finished. This involved lots of programming and creating a GUI. Other tasks that I have done include designing other evaluation boards, debugging our product, working with mechanical engineers to design our products, making schematics and board layouts on Eagle, learning about EMC issues and how to solve those, and trying to keep my desk clean.

Electrical Power

Jacob
Major: Electrical Engineering I worked on arc flash studies, substation testing, and landfill generation projects (designing, testing, and calibrating).

Invaluable Controls Engineering Experience

Daniel
Major: Electrical Engineering This was my third co-op and I was assigned my own projects costing thousands of dollars. I designed controls for different machines, programmed different robots, worked on different visions systems and programmed PLCs for different machines.

PLC's

Corey
Major: Electrical Engineering I was assigned to the headrest launch division where we assemble machines that bend and put notches in the metal headrest tubes. My major task for the Fall semester included: Leading the controls portion of a 3 machine builds. Learning how to configure Ethernet I/O modules and a different PLC programming language. Redesign our control panel for the machines we build, so that the technician has better access to important components during installation and troubleshooting. Work with the design engineer to ensure the controls part of a new machine has all components necessary and places to professionally route wires.

High Voltage

Jacob
Major: Electrical Engineering I worked on arc flash studies, substation testing, and small generation site projects (designing, testing, and calibrating).

Gentex - E.E.

Jared
Major: Electrical Engineering I developed and maintained hardware and software used for testing the various functions of Gentex products during the final assembly process.

Final Co-op

Manuel
Major: Electrical Engineering Electrical layout of component used in the conveyor system. Review of drawings. Review of PLC codes. Description of Operation for a system. AutoCAD work and simulation of PLC programs and making any changes needed

Co-op III: Ultrasonic Device Development

Matthew
Major: Electrical Engineering Our team is developing an ultrasonic cosmetic device, and I played a direct role in assessment of the amplifier system driving the ultrasound. By identifying differences in the amplifier's behavior during use, it became possible to use feedback to predict different states of the device and make recommendations to the user.

Nerf Guns and Board Routing

Jaime
Major: Electrical Engineering In contrast with last semester when I worked on software projects, this semester I worked on hardware projects. My two main projects were: 1. A board that connects with a Microchip Explorer 16 Dev Kit and allows for expansion or connections to other circuits, via Phoenix-style connectors. 2. A board that connects with an Altera Stratix IV Dev Kit via its HSMC slot, and processes video signals from 8 camera inputs (via RJ45 ports). For both of these projects, I did the schematic and layout work (board routing), as well as tag/releasing of data packages.

Progressive Surface: Round 3

Calvin
Major: Electrical Engineering This being my last semester at Progressive Surface, I continued where I left off; creating manuals, setting up computers, and creating layouts and schematics. I had a lot more responsibility this last time and was challenged with more intensive projects. I worked with another engineer on a stand alone rotary lance project and looked into the different upgrades we could make for it and how it would affect our cost of the finished project when we went through with the changes.

RFID Engineering in the coming

Caleb
Major: Electrical Engineering I applied and was hired on in the beginning of the summer of 2012, after my first year of college. This was highly beneficial being that I was able to get my foot-in-the-door. Most of my time here I have spent testing RFID tags and how specific inlays which we bought from Avery Dennison, UPM (SMARTRAC), Invengo and Alien. In addition I have worked to determine how the performance changes when encapsulated in different materials, which I simulate by sandwiching the inlays between different materials. This past summer, I have continued that testing and have worked towards actually figuring out some of the science behind RFID tags. In addition I have worked on helping Cascade Engineering decide what inlays to use for specific applications, and design, and build an automated testing unit to increase the repeatability and decrease the time my testing takes. I also worked on a number of other projects all in the RFID world and can say I have learned a lot.

Vision Inspection Systems

Mike
Major: Electrical Engineering I developed software for the user interface in C# using the .NET Framework in order to visualize the inspected defects to the operator in a meaningful way. I also developed some of the image processing software using C++.

Engineering Co-Op First Rotation

Carl
Major: Electrical Engineering During my first weeks I was in charge of doing a good deal of work on the floor helping the electricians. This involved wiring robotics, sensors, lasers, cutting wire way, and numerous other tasks. I was then given a computer and completed many red lines, which are corrections to the electrical and pneumatic drawings used for the creation of the machines. Some other tasks I completed included, creating valve stack tags, designing simple pneumatic drawings, operating some of the machinery, training operators, debugging hardware, debugging software, and implementing/writing some code using PLC software. I was placed on all types of jobs big and small. Each had its challenges and headaches but all were highly educational for controls engineering.

Co-op at DornerWorks

Alec
Major: Electrical Engineering I worked on design, testing, debug, and fixing both the hardware and software of several projects ranging from biomedical to R&D fields.

Co-op Student

Troy
Major: Electrical Engineering My first couple of weeks were learning how to read and use AutoCad Electrical schematics as well as a few internal programs to navigate the projects and drawings at Progressive Surface. After I learned the basics I did extensive AutoCad work setting up the core drawing sets for several machines, one of which I was able to follow from conception to construction. After the first month and a half I began setting up CNC's for controlling the robots in the machines. I also was in charge of setting up the PC's for each of the machines and producing the manuals. During my last month I was given a project to find out how to wire a new motor, drive, and power supply together to meet the specs given to me. This included learning to use the supplied software to meet the RPM requirements given certain analog inputs, and the physical wiring itself.

Fun with Controls

Corey
Major: Electrical Engineering I was assigned to the headrest launch division where we assemble machines that bend and put notches in the metal headrest tubes. My major task for the winter included: Leading the controls portion of a machine, develop a PLC program for checking motor coasting conditions, take the leading role for a project which GVSU built the control panel and programmed the PLC. Saved the company money, by arranging meetings with salesmen and developed testing procedures for the different products they offered in order to find cheaper products that will produce good results.

R&D with Gill Electronics

Luke
Major: Electrical Engineering I did lots of LTspice simulation and Eagle schematic layouts. I researched and developed human presence detection for the wireless charger as well as researching boost converters and battery charging.

Product Developement At Magnum

Jesse
Major: Electrical Engineering I had quite a few different projects. One was refurbishing a solder paste printer machine from the mid to late 80s. This included figuring out what was wrong with it, how to connect to it, and how ladder logic works. I had to design a board to interface with it and use a DOS emulator to communicate with it. Among other projects I also designed and tested three DC-DC power converters.

My Time As a Controls Engineer

Christian
Major: Electrical Engineering While on Co-op with Granco Clark I was placed in charge of 2 primary projects. The most significant of the two has actually gained myself and the company global recognition within our industry. I was tasked with and successful in testing, prototyping, and integrating wireless Bluetooth technology into our machines to allow for completely wireless I/O and communication between machines and the central processor. This made Granco Clark the first industrial automation manufacturer in the world to have integrated such technology into the automated metal extrusion process. It also resulted in a featured article by Light Metals Magazine that highlighted Granco's decision for its integration of wireless communication technology into the field of aluminum/metal extrusion.

Test Engineer

Jared
Major: Electrical Engineering I was tasked with maintaining and developing functional testers in the final assembly department. This included streamlining testing to increase throughput, modifying test-methods to reduce scrap, and developing new tests to improve quality. In addition, I was involved with launching new products, which required performing capabilities studies and setting specification limits based on customer specifications. These are just two of many areas that required my attention.