Today we ventured across the street—that street being NC highway 42 business—to the Caterpillar Clayton Machine Development Center (CMDC). This facility is home to the many engineers who design and test the smaller machinery that Caterpillar offers. Sadly, nearly all of my great picture taking opportunities were staunched by confidentiality. So instead, I have drawn up a satellite photo of the design domicile.
We began our day at location A, the design center. This is where all of the engineers reside to draw specifications and model solutions for Caterpillar’s machinery. The first place we went was a meeting room, for a safety briefing. Though the briefing was lengthy-around 15 slides of a PowerPoint-it was entertainingly detailed and thoughtful.
Soon after our briefing we went out for a tour of area B, the “fields.” These fields are the testing site for nearly all of the small Caterpillar machines. While many tests are brief, such as those measuring engine temperature, load on hydraulics or braking speed (notice the oval, that’s a full speed testing track, though the full speed happens to be 15mph for these 19 ton beasts), there are also endurance tests which take place. The endurance tests are often during daytime and overnight, and simulate normal operating conditions for long periods of time. For example, a small wheel loader moving gravel from one pile to another.
After touring the testing facility, we came back to building A and completed an engineering challenge. The challenge was to build a bridge out of spaghetti which spanned 40cm. Our design ended up quite strong, even though the approach seemed rather simple. It held over 2.5kg, and only fell off the tables after bending too much, rather than breaking (I’m still proud).
We then had lunch in the “Town Hall” room, which tells you quite enough about the significance of Caterpillar.
After lunch, we moved to area B briefly, where we saw some employees manufacturing and assembling prototype machinery. This is also the place where they install the many sensors required to properly perform tests. Though it sounds trivial, the sensors are actually very expensive and complicated. To demonstrate this to us thoroughly, we headed back to building A for a sensor cart instrumentation challenge.
This is the steering cart, with a steering wheel up top, hydraulically connected to the yellow cylinder in the front. The bottom box and nest of wires measures things like pressure, angle, and displacement of the system. To be clear, all of this is to teach and test the equipment. After getting a brief overview of the system, we were tasked with installing one of the sensors and initializing its software interface.
Today was a great day, I learned swaths of information and saw real-world applications of engineering. For this, I can’t thank Collin and Viviane enough.