As the International Manufacturing Technology Show brought thousands of engineers to Chicago, a simultaneous pop-up expo took shape last Friday throughout the second floor of the Engineering Building, with plenty of seeds planted for future symbiosis.
Numerous companies demonstrated their products in sensors, structures, automation, and rapid prototyping to over 100 CEET students, many of whom are seniors in the midst of brainstorming their Capstone Design projects.
For the students, it was a chance to see how hardware selections could affect design choices; for businesses, the three-hour open house format enabled them to introduce their brands to future engineers who will need to make real-world design choices in about a year’s time.
For both short- and long-term purposes, it was an effective way to connect on multiple fronts, said Presidential Teaching Professor Nick Pohlman, who for the second consecutive year incorporated the event into the Senior Mechanical Engineering Design course.
Student Emily Spreitzer said the “more laidback” setting created a positive environment to learn.
“It’s a lot easier to take in what they’re telling us and not be nervous about it,” said Spreitzer, a mechanical engineering major. “This also reinforced to me that making connections is important—and especially connecting with people who are already in these fields and have a lot of connections that can help us in the future.”
Salamon Ramos, likewise majoring in ME, was able to see how the integration of control software and controls, such as pumps, valves and actuators, helps processes come together.
“When you integrate those things, you start to see the magic,” Ramos said. “All you need is your ideas. This definitely gave me some ideas for my senior design project.”
Dan McSweeney described the experience as “comforting” amid “a lot of unknowns as you go through school.”
“This helped me see I could be a part of this team, I can help here (at a company),” added McSweeney, an ME major. “It adds a real-world element to all this work that we do.”
Companies represented included:
- Steiner Electric, suppliers of 8020, Banner Engineering, and Siemens automation.
- Emerson provided additional insight on automation solutions through product brands Aventics, ASCO, and A-fag.
- OEM pump supplier Xylem covered numerous forms of positive displacement and membrane pumps.
- Catalog supplier MISUMI showed the diversity of components available in their 5,000-plus page catalog as well as on-demand mechanical parts through meviy.
- GoEngineer, CEET’s provider of Solidworks, indicated the resume-enhancing certifications available through their training modules.
- Omron Automation multi-axis robot control, which was represented by recent CEET graduate George Lopez.
Business representatives emphasized the importance of networking and career development. Among other things, they urged students to attend the Pack Expo, held at McCormick Place in Chicago in early November; registration is free for all students.
Educating students and helping them envision what they need to prepare for not only the next year, but the next five or ten years, was one goal expressed by Erik Haugen, Industrial Products Support Manager for Steiner Electric.
“Bringing young talent into the industry and making sure they stay in the industry is very important,” Haugen said. “Within the first 10 minutes of meeting students, we recognize who’s very serious about this. There are students who stick out from the get-go. They come fully prepared. They’ve got questions, they have objectives, and they are very much invested in this. We have great interactions with them.”
Jim Musial, a Senior District Sales Manager with Emerson Automated Solutions, was part of a team of three side-by-side Emerson representatives who offered simultaneous demonstrations while answering questions.
Musial described the students as “very impressive and very eager” with “excellent” questions that fostered a strong dialogue throughout the day.
For Pierce Oppong, an ME major, the in-person demonstrations were a welcome improvement “instead of doing it on a screen.”
The Omron robot “caught my eye,” he added, given all the controls that went into it, as well as “all the sensors and systems and the computer programming that goes into it.”
“Ideally, I want to be in some programming-emphasized department when I graduate,” Oppong said. “I appreciate the opportunity—that they’re giving us time out of their day to come show us all these products, even though they know we’re probably not going to be buying them. This helps us develop a better understanding of what goes on in the career we’re going into.”
