Polaris - "Trail Domination"

Ben Dieter, from Polaris Industries, visited us yesterday as our weekly lunch speaker. The purpose of his visit was to talk about his experiences with work and the small business he also runs. Through these experiences he has developed a very diverse background in his career. Saying his presentation skills were great would be a understatement! He talked about his first months at Polaris in their Engineering Development program that covers marketing, manufacturing, design and how beneficial the experience was for him. He also talked about the time and pain that is being invested in your education, and how it is worth its wait in gold. He told us to be good at something and pull from that and make sure to take opportunities. He stressed that your education needs to be paired with experience.

"People are your greatest asset," he said, so you need to get along with them. Try and prepare yourself to be a better leader and edge that into your personality. Engineering Economics was mentioned, and how its nice to know about it when in a design phase of a project.

"The world is a changing place... so you need to also adapt... a lot of people don't like change." A lot of students asked how he balances his time between family and work. He said, "You cant do everything, so prioritize your action items that are urgent and important. Talk to who's in charge and delegate what you think you can get done and the time it will take you to do this."
It was a great presentation, very motivational, and hope to hear him speak again.

Proofed by: dp and EL

Crunch Time...Again

So we are entering the last 5 weeks of the semester, and I personally still have 6 competencies to prove, as well as a project to complete by the third week. On top of all that the internship hunt has heated up as of late and stress levels are at a maximum. I am reminded of how much I just can't wait to be done with school and to have a job. We recently had a lunch speaker that made a few good points. Most important of these is to decide what you value as an individual. I am learning day by day that spending 12+ hours a day at this place is about as far from an ideal situation as I could possibly be. I am confident that I will be able to finish my project on time. Thankfully I have a lot of interest in the Counterweight Lifting system we are working on, so I can stay on task when doing project work. As for the learning, its a war full of tough battles (electronics, material science) and fun experiences (hydraulics, lifting systems), but a war nonetheless. Once this experience is over, I am sure I will look back and realize that the stress levels only prepared me for future employment and that while I may be everwhelmed at my first job, I will have most of the skills necessary to be a success. Proofed by: Erin

Hibbing Taconite Project Update

Friday, the Iron Range Engineering student design team working on the Hibbing Taconite Counterweight Lift project made a trip out to Hibbing Taconite to provide the industry contacts with a project update. After a brief run through of the project background and scoping to bring all members of the meeting up to speed, we presented the three ideas of how to successfully complete the task.

After some discussion, the two feasible ideas were compared against each other in all aspects. The Screw Jack and the Hydraulic Ram each have benefits and downfalls, but both would work well for the task at hand. There was much discussion between the Hibbing Taconite engineers and operators as to which design would have the least maintenance, be the easiest to operate, and the easiest to implement.

At the end of the meeting it was decided that Hibbing Taconite needed more time to review the ideas and would provide us with an answer early this week. Once an option is chosen, final design drawings and parts lists will be delivered for review and implementation.

Proofed by Roth

United Paper Mills

Our Blandin project group is going to the UPM (United Paper Mills) plant tomorrow afternoon for a second on-site visit.  On our previous trips to Grand Rapids, we toured both the UPM plant and the Rapids Energy Center, from which UPM solely gets its energy from.  As seen personally from the tours, these are huge environments that consist of steam and water piping that extends for what seems to be miles.

The last time we were at UPM, we toured the #6 dryer line and somewhat familiarized ourselves with the complex components and processes that are fed with large amounts of steam supplied by REC.  Fortunately, our group attended a Kadant (supplier) seminar previous to this, which helped in identifying many things that would have been quite foreign to us in terms of what to look for in component and steam optimization.

Since that time our group has been working on ways to optimize steam energy without concerning ourselves with individual components.  Because of this, the trip there tomorrow is important.  We want to map certain steam lines to see what is used, what is recovered, and what is wasted.  Check back for updates.

Job Fair

Today, March 22 there was a job fair at the Thunderbird Mall in Virginia. A large group of Iron Range Engineering students took advantage of this opportunity. It was a great way for us to network with area businesses and industry; as fourteen of us will soon be making the transition from our comfortable college life to the real world. There were representatives from Cliffs Natural Resources, MN Power, Mesabi Nugget, Minnesota Diversified Industries, United States Steel and many other businesses. Many of which have already been supporters of IRE and played a big role in our education.

Governor Dayton

Last Friday, Governor Mark Dayton made a trip to the Iron Range and Iron Range Engineering was lucky enough to host him and other Minnesota representatives. Tyler Bartek, Carson Krueger, Grant Graupmann and I were able to walk the governor through some of the projects that our groups worked on last semester and a couple from this semester. He seemed more than interested in the students and projects by not only being attentive but also asking questions about the projects and about what we were planning on doing after we graduated from the IRE program.



After describing our projects to the governor, our program co-director, Ron, spoke his piece describing the history of the program, a little about how the program works, how we pair with industry, and about how we need more space for a growing program (adding ~25 new students in the fall). Governor Dayton apologized for not adding our request for money for a new building back into his bill. Robb Bigelow from United Taconite and LaTisha Gietzen from Polymet Mining described how having the IRE program on the Iron Range is such an asset to their companies and to the region as a whole.

Overall, it was a great event and a great opportunity.

Entrepreneurial Project Team Survey

Our friends at the MNSU College of Business finished writing the survey for our market research. This survey will help us figure out who our target market is and the general price figures we can shoot for. If anyone reading this is interested in guns, hunting, or shooting clays then this survey is for you. www.surveymonkey.com/cobire

Thanks for all your help.