ITW Hartness (Mechanical Intern)

After my internship with ITW Hartness in the summer of 2021 (https://www.rothzackary.com/post/itw-hartness-intern), I was given the opportunity to come back. However, instead of being a controls intern, I would be in mechanical (Which is the beauty of my degree, I can do both!).

As an overview for this summer, I had four major projects. The initial three were mechanical and the last was a hybrid with controls.

My first project was to Update the standard Template for the high-speed palletizing (HSP) robot Conveyor kit (the kit is a standard SolidWorks Assembly used to release work orders when a customer purchases the specific robot cell). This project meant streamlining the procedure of pulling specifications for a project via a project workbook and creating a Bill of materials/SolidWorks file.

As of today, I have Successfully reorganized the SolidWorks assembly part tree to be more straightforward for incoming orders. Reduced time spent setting up kits by a factor of two, and got rid of the need to remate any parts.

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The HSP conveyor kit included two other major projects. Starting with updating conveyor kits to conveyor groups standards. With the supervision and guidance of Jackson Carter (Mechanical Engineer) I created a new conveyor kit for robotics from the ground up. This included drawings, parts, and assemblies in PDM. The list of updates includes side frames, Chain Routing, Rollers, Nose Bars, Wear Strips, Spacers, Wear Bars, Torque arm, Bearing Plates, Guide Rail Brackets, Cross Members, and an Inspection Hole.

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The next HSP project started when I was told about a current issue with the legs used in robotic conveyors. The issue these legs had were that they had set nominal sizes for each assembly which meant they had one assembly each for 32”, 36” 42”, and 48” nominal elevation. This increased the number of parts Hartness had to keep at their disposal and made assembly wait till a nominal size was determined for the specific work order before even trying to assemble the conveyor. This is what caused me to come up with new versatile legs. In total, I came up with 12 unique designs and conducted a cost analysis on the final two designs that were favored by the engineering team.

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My last major project in this internship was a case packer tool creator. I developed a SolidWorks VBA Macro to streamline the creation of their multi-product case packing pneumatic robot end-of-arm tooling. Responsibilities included creating a functioning program that takes dimensional/orientation data from the customer's unique product and determining what tools Hartness makes right now that work. If there are still products that need new tooling, the program must be capable of creating new tools from scratch. This included descriptors, part numbers, technical drawings, assembly, file management, and any other properties required. Thus fully automating an entire engineering process.

Now you might be wondering, is this mechanical engineering or Is this computer science? Well, it is both worlds colliding. The edge I get for being a master of none when it comes to my mechatronics degree is that I can easily meld the two disciplines together to create cool projects such as this. Towards the end of my internship, I had successfully created a program that is capable of creating robot end-of-arm tools from scratch while having an easy-to-use user interface that turned a typical 5 to 7-day project into 10 to 30 minutes while eliminating subjective design practices/mistakes and increasing margins on the tooling itself.

I can not emphasize enough how much I valued this internship again! I had my very first mechanical engineering experience, I got countless hours in SolidWorks, learned a new programming language (VBA) and its potential, experienced the process of design and fabrication in industry, learned the use/practice of product data management, and even got to visit ITW Corporate headquarters (Pictures shown above).

Disclaimer: Pictures of my projects are considered confidential all I can show is all above.