One of my biggest jobs while working at Girton was converting their standards from 2D drawings to 3D models in SolidWorks. These standards were modular parts and assemblies that were reused on many of their washer designs and were still primarily in 2D drawings that had to be converted to 3D models to be used on their newer designs that were created in SolidWorks. These standards ranged from meshes and baskets to blower assemblies to machined nozzles. As a part of converting these standards to 3D models, I also had to make the models easily adaptable by using configurations and configuration tables and also the equation feature on SolidWorks, and as a result, I gained extensive knowledge of using these two features.

Another job I had that was very similar was converting the drawings for a bedding dispenser called a BD80 to a complete 3D model. The BD80 would be part of a larger washer that cleaned out old mouse cages used by the research industry. It would take the cleaned cages and dispense bedding into them to get them ready to be reused. This was a project that was started by another engineer at Girton that I picked up and completed, and it was much more involved and intricate compared to the standards because it took me many weeks to finish the model for it. Some of the aspects I had to take into account while converting the drawings were to make the models configurable for different cage sizes and configuring the materials for the parts to show up correctly on auto-generated BOMs on SolidWorks.

Another job I had while interning at Girton was to work on a few in-house projects to reuse scrap metal from their washers. For this, I was tasked with making a drawer out of mostly 14 and 18 GA steel with preferably no fasteners and no welds. The drawer would be used on their manufacturing lines to hold parts to make everything more organized.

The first rendition of this design used no welds and no fasteners except for a few zip ties to hold the drawers together, which was accomplished by using slits in the sheet metal that allowed for all of the parts to slot together like a puzzle. The issue with this design was that the base that held the drawers was too wobbly since it was not held together with any welds or fasteners and the shelves for the drawer would sometimes fall apart if it was not used or transported properly

As a result, the next rendition of the design was much more robust at the expense of more parts and more zip ties that would hold it together. Cross braces in the back prevented the base from wobbling and the shelves for the drawer were all zip-tied to the base too so it couldn't fall apart with transportation and misuse. The drawers were also upgraded to use 18 GA metal to make them lighter and were made to be customizable and have different sized partitions for different sized parts. This design was approved by the line workers who used them.

Preface: I did not have any good screenshots of the design, so apologies for the low-quality picture.

The washer that connects to the BD80 bedding dispenser mentioned above also has a grinder unit that is attached to it that grinds up the old bedding from the mouse cages to be disposed of through the sewer line. Girton would purchase these grinders from another company, but they had been having issues with turnaround times and the quality of the product that arrived where the dimensions did not meet the specifications that were given to the company. So my job was to design a similar grinder that they could manufacture themselves.

I was given a lot of freedom with the design, which led me to have to do a lot of research to see what material thicknesses and design choices to make to have a functional grinder that would also be safe to use. I decided to use quarter-inch-thick stainless steel plates for most of the grinder's body so that if one of the chopper blades breaks off, the blade wouldn't penetrate the body of the grinder.

I also had to figure out how to make it so that the unit would be easily assembled and cheaply manufactured and also so that manufacturing errors would not significantly affect the final product and would not require recutting and rebending with small errors.