My name is Taylor Warren. I am a 3rd year Mechanical Engineer at Michigan Technological University. I am a very passionate person who strongly believes in whatever is worth doing is worth overdoing. I also desire to keep learning new things as learning helps one understand more and become more well rounded.
Interests[edit | edit source]
Cars
My interest in cars directly came from my father. Since I was 13, my dad has always been interested in cars and loved working on them. From his old Jeep wrangler to his fast CTSV. With all of the work he did on his cars I was able to work with him helping him add various components specifically to his CTSV. Which includes bigger heads, cam shaft, and a larger blower. Through doing this work I grew to love cars and desire to own a very fast one later in my life.
Computers
Since I was the age of 9 I enjoyed playing games which developed into a love for computers. I currently use a desktop that I built. Even though I built a computer I would enjoy learning more specifics of how each component works as well as the raw programming that goes into the windows system.
3D Printers
Although I have minimal experience working with or on 3D printers I strongly believe that they are a very impacting mechanism that have a lot of potential to create and help many different companies and people. With a strong interest to learn more about the 3D printers I am currently working with Aubrey Woern to get a better understanding of the 3D printing process as well as the various components of a 3D printer.
Robotics
Robots are very fascinating and understanding how they are programmed is very crucial. During my seconds semester at Michigan Tech I was assigned to create a GUI (Graphics User Interface) for an autonomous robot of my choosing. For this I decided to create a grocery robot that would have the user type what groceries they wanted and the robot would go gather the desired groceries for that user. Although this wasn't implemented and only simulated with programming I have a strong desire to learn more on how I can program a robot and learn more of the potential these robots have in different fields of work.
Experience[edit | edit source]
Magna Engineered Glass
Summer 2016
This summer I worked with plastics engineers focusing on a thermoplastics process known as injection molding. Magna Engineered Glass focuses on the plastic seal around windows of cars. Matt Normaan whom was recently hired as a plastics engineer, was put in charge of the 3 highest scrap programs. Just starting my internship I was assigned to work with Matt, so he wouldn't be overwhelmed with responsibilities. The main focus during this internship was lowering the scrap of the 989 slider, known as the Toyota pickup's slider window. The scrap for this program was averaging around 15% and the statues quo for Magna is for each program to be around 3% scrap. To ensure I would have a basic understanding of the injection molding process, Matt gave me a brief lesson about it as well as told my exactly why he made certain changes to the process. By hands on learning I was able to get valuable experience and was given more responsibilities in the processing changes for programs that were overloading with scrap. By the time I left the scrap drastically had fallen from 15% to around 4% with steady improvements still to be implemented. During this time I was also in charge of finding equipment that needed updating or was missing that could improve the process on one of Matt's lines.
Summer 2017
During this summer I worked with a different plastics engineer named Tj Moneta. Although his programs weren't suffering with bad scrap like the 989 program, his processes still had a lot of room to improve. For the Honda 2 Door process we improved scrap by redefining what was passable and not, since we were seeing many parts being scraped with minor defects that were passable. Also due to the insane cost of bezels $12-$6 we didn't need a high scrap rate to have a high scrap cost. Next I did viscosity test on the different lots of material that we were using since some lots were producing more scrap vinyl defects. We found during this project that the more viscous material produced the most scrap and I sent emails to our supplier to only send on a certain level of viscosity for this program. There were many other small improvements that were made but the biggest project I was assigned to was the GM rear window of the Escalade. The problem was that after the windows were being installed in GM's factory the solder components, which are responsible for heating the back windows, were falling off. With obvious implications Magna was forced to figure out how this was happening or else pay a large sum of money. During this project I was in charge of figuring out if our process was sufficient enough. To do this I used a mechanism that applied a certain force, that was 3xs larger than required from GM, to these solder pins. After applying this force I would mark down if it fell off or not. In a sample of 200 windows I found that 1 fell off however, this was with knowledge of using a much higher force than required. After the pins were hit we put them in an oven that cycled through hot and cold temperatures to ensure that the weather couldn't produce failure for these pins either. After it was all said and down I was able to prove that it was GM's operators who were carelessly installing the window wrong and applying too much force to these windows in the process, therefore saving Magna from paying GM a large sum of money.