In 2022, I joined a small startup of just over a dozen brilliant engineers with a simple vision: to democratize manufacturing by unlocking digital fabrication of sheet metal as no one had done before. The setup is deceivingly simple: two high-payload robots forming between them a piece of sheet metal like pottery.

At that stage, I had to wear many hats. I helped develop motion planning methods for this 2x 7-DoF robotic system to form sheet metal, scan it, scribe it, drill holes through it, and trim it out. I helped build out DFM criteria for this new technology. I maintained robot health and calibration states. I troubleshot anything that could go wrong — and a lot can go wrong.

Over time, my role evolved. I became the technical lead for some of our largest clients and investors, responsible for being their primary technical contact, continuing to develop our robotic process, and preparing it for adoption by these clients.

After graduating from college, I joined BW Design Group, an engineering firm that built out the factories behind many of the products you see on supermarket shelves. As a controls engineer, I learned a lot about modernizing factories, and what it really takes to run production manufacturing environments. 

My role at BWDG struck a great balance of teaching me hard and soft skills alike. On the one hand, I learned how to program PLCs, wire up control panels, and develop HMIs. On the other hand, I learned how to communicate with clients and manage their requirements and deadlines in environments where deadlines have real implications.

For my final co-op at Drexel, I joined Agilent Technologies on the GC/MS team. For the unfamiliar, a GC/MS (gas chromatography–mass spectrometry) machine takes a sample.. say, Diet Coke.. and identifies the chemicals inside. The GC vaporizes the sample and pushes it through a coated tube, where different molecules separate based on how fast they travel. Then, the MS ionizes it and sends it through a magnetic fields, where it deflects during it’s path. The timing from the GC + the deflection within the MS can tell you what the chemical is.

It was an experience I am very grateful for, as it taught me a lot about advanced manufacturing and lab instrumentation. It also put me in a position working daily with a combination of manufacturing engineers, supply managers, and technicians. This hands-on environment really taught me the ropes of operating as part of a team in a large and multidisciplinary organization.

For two co-ops, I joined Kulicke & Soffa, a company behind some of the most important semiconductor advanced packaging equipment in the modern day. Every chip you see, from CPUs and GPUs, to all the little ones covering your favorite microcontroller, has a piece of plastic or metal bonded on top of it. There’s a good chance that Kulicke & Soffa was behind that!

At Kulicke & Soffa, I tackled some incredibly fascinating engineering problems , requiring levels of precision hardly seen in most industries. The coolest project I had was one where I had to create a mapping of an optical CMM’s error, to help quantify the exact manufacturing error in a calibration plate made of quartz. I was able to extract a CMM error map, thermal expansion behavior, optical distortion, and more. Please ask me about this project if you chat with me, I love talking about it.