RFID Engineering in the coming
Caleb
Experience Information
Employer: Cascade Engineering
Job Title: RFID Intern
Major: Electrical Engineering
Received Credit: Yes
Paid: Yes
Abroad: No
Description of the Organization
Cascade Engineering is a manufacturer comprised of thirteen strategic business units serving a wide diversity of markets including automotive, commercial truck & bus, solid waste & recycling, furniture, material handling, consumer products, RFID, renewable energy, and consulting services. The core competency of Cascade Engineering is in large scale plastic injection molding. With 15 facilities throughout North America and Europe, and 1,100 employees throughout those facilities. Cascade Engineering is a highly innovative company ready to take on many projects which other company's may have not been able to figure out.
Description of the Tasks/Projects Completed
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.
Skills/Knowledge Gained Through The Experience
I have learned: - to use Excel quite well through a lot of its use. - to design something, how to order parts in a manufacturing facility, work with maintenance to make specific parts needed and how to work with Bond Fluidaire to get 80/20 parts to build my automated assembly. * in addition I taught myself better of how to use Solidworks better - different methods of building and designing any different things. - quite a bit about how RFID works. - how different programming languages work and what you can do with them although I did very little programming. - how to be independent and teach myself how to do a lot of things and when help is needed who to talk to to help me get something accomplished.
Favorite Part of the Experience
I am working my way towards learning a lot about RFID and how to apply it in different places, especially being that it is a very new field of study and I can see its applications in so many places in the companies that I work with. I am looking forward to what I will be able to do in this field in the future.
How the Experience Influenced Future Career Goals
One of my original goals of getting into Cascade Engineering was to eventually work on renewable able energy being that I really like energy and how to generate green energy. Especially since I do not trust oil to last us forever with our lifestyle. However since I have been working on RFID, I am seeing its application in so many things and can see myself working on RFID tags to help companies remove themselves from trusting the barcode nearly as much and trusting an RFID tag even more with its much larger abilities.