link description
Link is a 3-week internship for juniors at Animas High School to try out possible career fields that we are interested in. For my link, I interned at Carbon Forum Design with Ryan Finnigan. Carbon Forum Design is a custom fabrication company in Durango. They mostly do high end metal work, building things such as business signs and restaurant Interiors.
our project
For our project, we built a prototype IOT integrated smart table that would act as a control panel. Instead of using buttons or a touchscreen like most smart homes, we used a conductive inlay on the top of the table and a high impedance circuit to control the table. So when you want to turn on a light, or other device, you touch one finger to the symbol on the table surface and another to a piece of grounded metal on the table, which will turn on the light. This is because when you touch the inlay and ground at the same time you are completing a circuit that tells the computer to turn on the light.
reflection
Coming into Link I did not have the technical skills required for the work. However, I found that my adaptability and capacity for physical work all day served me well. Almost every project is different in custom fabrication and there are lots of variables involved. Being able to adapt and come up with solutions was very helpful. For example, the second week of our internship the other team was behind schedule on a project, which needed to be installed at the end of the week. We stopped working on our project and helped them with the final touches and putting it together.
During Link, I developed a lot of technical skills like welding and cutting metal to precise lengths. From previous projects at Animas, I have had a lot of practice working in groups on somewhat similar projects, but not much experience using the types of equipment at the work shop. To build our table, we had to make precise square cuts, sand wood, and cut, weld, grind, and patina the steel. These were all things that I had little or no practice at before this project. We had some challenges with our project. Janae chose us to be one of the Link projects to represent Animas High School at her exhibition, but we had to have our project presentable by Tuesday afternoon the week after Link. This was a challenge because we had a slow start the first week as our mentor was busy and could not help us. The second week we ended up mostly helping with another project. We overcame this by staying late a couple nights and working the next week all the way until the exhibition. I think that we were a big help to Carbon Form over our three-week internship. We helped finish a project and install it in time, which might not have been otherwise possible. We also made a semi functional prototype which we intend to finish this summer during our extended internship that our mentor offered us. I really enjoyed my Link internship. I felt like I was learning a lot and it was work I enjoy doing. I think that it will hep me in my next steps because now I know that fabrication is a field of work that I'm interested in. Knowing this is helpful because it gives me a direction I want to further explore. Before Link, I had things I was interested in but I did not really know what I wanted to do after college. Now I know that I want to continue to further develop my fabrication skills, or learn a similar trade. |