I am in the Mechanical Engineering major and did a co-op rotation at BorgWarner Turbo Systems. I had many various projects to work on and/or complete throughout my six month rotation. Most of these projects either had to do with manual fabrication, using excel and data analysis. This work ranged from fabricating
gas stand measurement sections, modifying adapters, formulating equations on excel and analizing graphs. I feel like the time spent, knowledge and money i gained from working at BorgWarner was the experience was well worth the semester away from school.
Although this was most of the work, there was still one last very important and necessary part of completing any functional project. This step is to write a technical document explaining the purpose of the "tool", how to use the "tool", how to read the results, Maintenance, safety and storage. Without this document, the new "tool" is useless once a person other than the creator tries to use it. For example, one project i was given was to try and find a solution for how to determine an approximate air leakage rate on gas stands just by looking at soapy bubble growth and rate that was sprayed on the leaks. I ended up making a "leak simulator" that had three different size unkown leak rates on it. It was used to compare to the gas stand leaks in order to get an idea of how big or small the leak is on the gas stand. Obviously there were certain assumptions that had to be made, specific conditions and gas stand settings in order for the "leak simulator" to work right. All of the specifics and "instructions" were easily explained to new users through the critical technical document. Obviously i wish that i took this class before i did my co-op due to me having to write two of these documents, but now hopefully the co-op will help with this class.
I have realized that Technical Writing 314 at Clemson turns out to be an important class to take for Mechanical Engineering along with working at an automotive related job such as BorgWarner. Does anyone else have any experience with wishing they had taken this class earlier than this semester? Either with a
Mechanical Engineering major or any major?
