Today was my first day shadowing at the Apex Tool Group. I was a bit nervous at first, but after meeting many of the nice people working there, I am now only excited for the days to come! Matthew and I started the day off with a tour around the building. We got to greet many people working in different departments — there were departments for engineering, design and packaging, machinery, human resources, management, and more. I was very impressed by how massive the building (and company) was, with so many different people with different specialties working together to create their products. After the tour, I shadowed my main mentor, Ms. Heather Stone, as she was checking the labels and information on drawings for her products. I was very happy to be able to help — we had to look for typos and spots where information was missing or the drawings were overlapping the boundaries. Ms. Stone also checked over the dimensions and labels on the drawings. She very kindly (and patiently) taught me how to fix the mistakes on their main CAD software, Creo Parametric. We then went out for lunch at Panera with Mr. Welch, Matthew, and Matthew’s mentor Mr. Cecil Wilson. After lunch, I met up with Mr. Bob Thompson, a Senior Pro E Technician. He is an expert at using CAD software — he taught me how to create 2D and 3D drawings from scratch. We started by measuring all the dimensions of a flange nut. Mr. Thompson then showed me how to create a 2D drawing of the side view of the nut. We then moved onto the 3D software, which is much faster and easier to use. While I say that it was “easier” I simply mean in comparison to the 2D software — creating drawings is incredibly difficult and intricate work. Drawing the flange nut would be considered easy and basic work by Mr. Thompson, but I would have taken days trying to do it by myself. Luckily, Mr. Thompson speedily got the work done, creating the drawing I have attached below. While the attached drawing seems to be 2D, it is actually 3 different perspectives of the 3D drawing Mr. Thompson created. I contributed in only small parts, but still felt incredibly proud of and amazed by the end product — to me, the drawing is a work of art. After creating the drawing, Mr. Thompson showed me how to format the drawing to send off and be 3D printed. We moved to the machinery room, where Brett adjusted the 3D model and simulated its creation with the metal carving machine. Mr. Thompson also started the 3D printing of a plastic version of the product — created with layers of resin. Brett started the process of carving the flanged nut from a block of steel — I attached a video of the machinery at work (it’s very cool). Sadly, we had to cut the printing and carving short, but I was still able to see most of the final product. The 3D printed nut was also mostly finished, so Mr. Thompson rinsed it off with a high-pressure rinser (which took off the outside layer of resin) and gave it to me along with the drawing we had created. Mr. Thompson showed me one of the most beautiful aspects of mechanical engineering — seeing your ideas form into 3D models, and then seeing those 3D models built as real and functional products. I learned so much from Mr. Thompson and everyone I met and talked with throughout the day. I would definitely consider pursuing mechanical engineering to someday create more CAD designs — thank you so much, Mr. Thompson! I am very excited to see what other skills I may learn in the days to come.
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