Day 7- Friday, May 17

On Friday I was able to start assembling the valve box, which is not that exciting to describe. All I did was connected the parts together with wires and then solder them. We did manage to blow up the light bulb in the on/off switch some how when we tested to make sure my wiring was correct, so that was interesting. We had to order a new which should be there by Monday. The other part of my day was spent talking with an engineer in the material control lab and a program engineer. The material control lab is where all the pieces they make at Parker are analyzed on a microscopic level to make sure that there are no cracks in the pieces and that the different parts are attached together firmly. Basically the engineer in that lab cuts up the pieces, polished them, and then looks at them under a microscope. The lab has some really cool equipment like the electron microscope they use to check for really tiny cracks.  The other person I talked to was a program engineer. A program engineer is the head engineer of a contract that Parker has with another company to design a part. The program engineers job is to make sure that everything stays on track with designing and making the part. Using a football analogy, the project engineer would be the coach, coming up with the plays, making sure everyone works together, etc.