Winding Down

There isn't much time left in this semester, and I think everyone is feeling the stress of those final deadlines. Although there are a lot of things going on in the IRE rooms right now, there is much anticipation for summer internships, and summer in general.
Many people will be off working in the mines and at local industries- doing anything from writing standard work procedures to designing new components for the company. These are great opportunities to get real world experience in the engineering field and help students decide on a career after school. The students are also building relationships with industry. Those relationships will benefit the students in their professional careers, and also give the IRE program professionals to network with.
In addition to the anticipation of a new job, I think everyone is pretty excited about the nice weather. It can get difficult to stay indoors and get homework done, but we keep each other going.

Reason to choose IRE

As the semester is coming to an end, it is a busy and exciting time to be at IRE. I am enjoying seeing all the projects and experiments coming to completion. All the hard work and research everyone has put into their projects is really interesting to see. I have enjoyed many conversations about other people’s projects as I walk by and ask questions. I find that willingness to share information and the overall want of the other students to help each other learn is what makes I.R.E. a special place. It is the attitude of the people and the staff that make me glad I choose I.R.E. for my educational needs.

Volunteering at FIRST

Part of the Iron Range Engineering program requires participating or volunteering in the community. Two FIRST Robotics Regional competitions took place at the Williams Arena and Mariucci Arena at the University of Minnesota this last weekend where two IRE students volunteered. FIRST Robotics is a high school competition where schools build robots and then compete to see which team can score the most points. Each school has six weeks to design and build a robot. For high school students, this is a crazy engineering challenge.

This year’s competition is called “Rebound Rumble” and is a modified version of basketball. The game is played on a 27 by 54 foot field, divided in two by a short barrier with three bridges crossing it. Two teams of three robots attempt to score baskets by acquiring foam basketballs and shooting them into one of four hoops placed at three different heights. At the beginning of the match, there is an autonomous period where the robots are programmed to act on their own. Baskets scored in this period are worth more points. Near the end of the match, robots can endeavor to balance on their team’s bridge for even more points. 

For volunteering, my friend and I were Scorekeepers at the Williams Arena. Scorekeepers make sure the basketball points are properly counted and that the points from the bridge balancing are counted as well. We also coordinated with the video and sound crew and the announcers. In addition, before the matches began, we assisted with connecting the robots and driver stations to the field software. The competition ran from Thursday morning to Saturday afternoon and included 65 teams from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Tennessee.

Spring

Spring has come upon us. Warm, sunny days are beckoning outside, distracting our work-wearied souls. Now is not the time for distraction however, with 33 school days left from today (March 20th) the end is near. Competencies and design work loom over all IRE students no matter how prepared they might be, but this is the transition to the real working world that we all signed up to be exposed to in our project based learning. Deadlines and bosses are a fact of life that we are now learning to cope with as we go through our self directed projects. While at times this seems overwhelming, there is hope in those warm spring days of completing the rigors of another semester at IRE.

Proof read by: Jeremy Goodell

Udacity Course

At IRE, all students are currently working on their team project, competencies, and professionalism; concurrently, several students are also undertaking an innovative, online class through Udacity. Udacity is offering several free, online courses, beginning with a computer science 101 class. The ultimate goal of the class is to write a web crawler program which is like a simplified version of Google’s or Bing’s search engines. The online class involves watching short YouTube videos, answering questions about those videos, and then practicing writing a program as homework. The programming environment is in Python, which I have found similar to several of the languages I have previously used, i.e. C++ and VBA. Overall, the course has provided a good review of programming and has introduced several new concepts.

Below is a sample of code used to print out multiplication or division of two input numbers:

 

 Proofread by Brian Stephenson and Michael Rudi

Essar Steel Substation Design

This semester I, along with my team, have been tasked with designing a building that will contain the electrical equipment for Essar Steel's new pellet plant being constructed just outside of Nashwauk, MN. The design envolves creating an equipment layout, a grounding system design, a structural building design, a design for lighting, and heating ventalation & air conditioning system design. The scope of our project is rather large compared to other projects that I have been on while at IRE. Due to this large scope we have split our team of six into smaller groups to tackle each of the tasks.

Throughout the first half of our project our team had some very valuable experiences. The team dealt with changes in the design everyday due to factors beyond of our control. I think this is definitely how the industrial world works, so the team learns to manage these changes. Another great experience this project provides is involvment in multiple disciplines of engineering. The project envolves civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering concepts. This project gives our team a close, practical, look at how all disciplines need to work together to produce a high-quality design.


This project, like most IRE projects, helps to shape us as engineers and gives us experiences that help us grow technically, professionally and personally.

Project No. 2

This semester I was given the opportunity to work on second project with DMR Electronics. DMR Electronics is a local company based in Hibbing. They design, manufacture and remanufacture industrial electronic components and wiring harnesses. They also provide electronic manufacturing services (contract manufacturing) for circuit board assemblies.

For this project, I am working alongside fellow Iron Range Engineering student Graham Redshaw. Our project is very detailed. The problem DMR is having is that their power factor is extremely low. Power factor is the ratio of real power to total power and is an indicator of power loss in a distribution system. The lower the power factor, the more wasted energy there is that the power company has to deal with. Therefore, if a company has a low power factor in their equipment, the power company will often implement a surcharge.

Our project involves 4 main steps. Step 1 will be to research power factor. This will give us a background as we move forward in the project. Step 2 is to locate the proper equipment and measure the power factor of all their machines. Step 3 is to analyze the results, and draw conclusions of possible reasons why the power factor is so low. Step 4 will be to give DMR cost estimates of possible solutions to correct their power factor.

This project will be beneficial to me in a number of ways. To begin with, I am improving my professionalism by working with two of DMR’s engineers, Wade Thorson and Steve Dureen. Secondly, I am gaining hands-on experience from working with their equipment and machines. Lastly and most importantly, I am incorporating my technical learning into a real-life project, which is what engineering is all about.

Posted by Cord Semotink