Blog 2 – Jessica Rempel
July 3, 2018 12:23 pm Leave your thoughts
Hello again!
For those of you who read my previous post and played the little game at the end, here’s the truth and lies. Believe it or not, I am just as nerdy as it seems; I do have 50 digits of pi memorized and I can solve a rubik’s cube in 90 seconds. I have also been known to rip a few phone books in half, and although I took two years off after high school and backpacked through Europe, I only travelled to 17 countries and not 20! So only 3 more countries to go and all of those would be true. For those who didn’t read my last post, go check it out! And maybe that will make more sense to you.
My first two months at Tolko have been a blast already! I love the technology I get to work with and everyday I’m challenged to learn something new. My days typically consist of researching, troubleshooting, designing, and writing logic. I’ve spent the majority of my first two months here working on a project to position a pneumatic (air) cylinder. For those of you who have no idea what that means, here’s a little explanation. In almost all cases a cylinder will use it’s entire stroke in operation (ie. fully out, then fully in), but it can be useful to stop the cylinder at any given position. Although that might seem an easy task, it requires precise pressure control and wicked fast response times. So with the help of my amazing supervisor, I set to the task of accomplishing this.The process involved designing and assembling a test set-up on the floor in my office, and then re-designing and re-assembling several times until it was just right. As well, I spent a good chunk of time researching every part used in the set-up to find flow rates, response times, accuracy, measurements, and limits. There was plenty of troubleshooting between every stage of this process as each test set-up had its drawbacks and problems. And of course it would only be normal that we would break a few parts along the way and have to rearrange our set-up to fix it. And lastly there was plenty of writing and rewriting the logic for our various set-ups. All the work paid off however, because in the end we were able to accurately position the cylinder within a few millimeters! Super cool stuff. Other than allowing for precision and accuracy, this design is also a much more sustainable method! Since the distance the cylinder will be moving is more than cut in half, that also means that we reduce our air consumption in half as well.
In other exciting news, I signed up for my first half-marathon on October 5th!! So during after work hours and also when it isn’t a scorching 32 degrees outside, I am usually out running around the neighbourhood or finding running trails nearby my house. Just the other day I found a beautiful place to run 5 minutes from my house! It’s called Cosens bay in Kalamalka Provincial Park. It was a 7km run round trip and ended with me having an entire beach all to myself! Although I nearly died on my way back up the hill, the views were gorgeous the entire time! If you live in the Okanagan area, I highly recommend checking it out!
Image 1: Cosens Bay Beach all to myself
Until next time,
Jess Rempel