Hello, my name is Gage Armstrong and I am a fourth-year Engineering Management Student with a minor in Enterprise. I have been part of the manufacturing and Husky Project Teams.
Interests[edit | edit source]
- With Engineering Management, I am looking to get job where I am able to use my engineering skills while being a leader of a team
- During my internships I got Six Sigma, 5S, and Lean Manufacturing Experience
- I am part of the Varisty Track and Field Team at MTU
- I enjoy 3D printing and figuring out new projects to do
Experience[edit | edit source]
Senior Year 2018-2019
Fall Senior Project
User:Gwarmstr/Fall_2018_Senior_Project_Update#Plastic_Printing
Did research understanding different 3D printers. Since 3D printing is still something new to me, I wanted to start out by looking into exactly what goes into 3D printing. I was part of an Industrial Health and Safety Enterprise course with Dr. Sandell so I wanted to look more into the safety of these printers. This included understanding the immediate dangers of a printer, and potential long term health issues. I am spending more work on 3D metal printers and printers that use UV radiation. With metal printers I am looking at the effects of mixing different metals and how oxidization can effect the process of it. If there is a lot of oxidization going on this can be very dangerous and there are chances of an explosion or fire that can happen. This is where using a neutralizing gas like argon comes into play. Next would be with the UV radiation printer. UV radiation is extremely dangerous to the users, so there need to be a way to protect them. The idea was to come up with a protective screen like a pair of sunglasses. I am still looking at a potential way that would be cheaper and easier to apply.
Spring Senior Project
The main thing that happened this semester was an analysis on the Open Source Hardware products. This was a comparison of Lulzbot printers, to the High Temperature printer, the recycle bot V1 and V5.1, and the granulator. I started out wanting to compare what work would go into using all of these when comparing it to a minimum wage job or to a $100/hr job. Since I am still somewhat new to 3D printing, I compared myself to others in the enterprise who are way more experienced. After some thought I decided that it would not be necessary to compare the difference between these two. From my understanding of the different machines and what work would be needed to "run" a company, minimum wage would be all that is needed for this position. There were things I did not know, but with a simple 10-20 minute training, I understood a lot more.
The next aspect of the business was the Power Usage of all the OSHE components and the capabilities of them all. The capabilities more so included the recycle bots and the granulator. The printers capabilities were really just what kind of filament could be used and at what temperature. Comparing the power usage of all the Open Source machines was really interesting and surprisingly cheap for the amount of work that would go into them. So this makes it easier to have a reason for a mini business.
The last part that is really important was downtime for everything. I spent a couple weeks looking at reports of the machines, looking at the actual machine, and talking with teammates about what has gone wrong on the projects. Some are much more difficult to deal with, like the High Temperature Printer which has the plastic base of the printer actually melt as it is being used. Others was simple like a 50mm CPU fan that is cheap.
Junior Year 2017-2018
- This year I am working with Kevin Pressl to get our website/social media working again. We are also trying to come up with new and cool projects to complete and print to bring an attraction to our enterprise. Since the beginning of this year I have already heard people talking to our enterprise and showing interest in it.
- I am also looking for more projects to do like the small scale manufacturing project that I did last spring.
- We would like to come up with a bigger print idea that we can use the huge printer downstairs to show off what we do.
- For the spring of 2017 my main project was to work in the small scale manufacturing project. We got a project from the school where they would pay us to make 300 Husky Statue prints. These would then be given out to Tech alumni. During the length of the semester we set up a schedule where everyone signed up for a time to come in, switch out the prints, and clean the previous husky off.
- Engineering 1101 and 1102 Design Teams
- For the future we would like to have a print farm. This will basically be a wall of 3D printers that are always running. We also got approved to create any kind of MTU, Upper Peninsula, or any kind of products that we would like to. MTU would then buy these from us. This is where the small scale manufacturing will become big in the future funding us.