A couple of days ago I came across an advertisement, although I don’t pay much attention to random adds, this happened to be one of those days in which I felt like clicking on everything, anyway, this add was about an item called ‘Coffee Joulies’ which according to the advertisement would keep your coffee at the right temperature i.e not too hot and prevent it from going to cold quickly. I am pretty sure most of you haven’t heard of this because it is not as significant as world peace or the internet or something. I still felt the idea which used simple thermodynamics and material science is a good example of a creative mind and a step in the right direction. After doing some research I found out that they have used some sort of phase change material which is designed to melt at 140F (60C), absorbing heat energy from the coffee as it does so. This reportedly allows it to cool coffee three times faster than normal. Once the Joulie has cooled down past 60 degrees, however, it starts to solidify again, thus releasing the energy it stored while melting this is what keeps the coffee warm although I would really like to know the nature of material used in it but unfortunately they have kept that a secret and therefore I cannot comment on that. However, on the design I think it would be a hassle to keep steel items in your pockets or wherever and could be worth a thought to incorporate the device in a travel mug or a container of some sort.
My point being I was really impressed by the implementation of simple thermodynamics in an everyday task in order to enhance it, which in my opinion is the way forward. Such ideas need to be encouraged as well as properly funded so that people could try and take risks which in the current state of economy few people are willing to do so. Especially, paired with the imminent decline of graduates in various fields, due to the rise in tution fees, there will eventually be stagnation of creative thinking. People will strive to make ends meet and continue doing what their jobs require them to do without letting their minds wander or in other words think outside the box.
Working on my placement in a steel mill, on the first steps of my career I have tried my level best to involve myself into the very nuts and bolts of whatever I can get into, as I have noticed that climbing up the career ladder you tend to move further and further away from hands on work and more into an office environment completing paperwork, looking after different jobs and admin related stuff which at this stage I refer to as pointless and boring.
Involving myself in some jobs in the lubrication department enlightened me about the importance of innovation in maintenance, which at first would seem to be an absurd statement but in fact is very true, you need to be a quick thinker with a creative mind to deal with problems that keep appearing even in a seemingly smooth running system.
The reason behind this revelation is something that happened a few weeks back. While I was reviewing and updating my logbook around half an hour before leaving work, one of tanks which supplies lubrication oil to the mill went beserk. The graph which keeps updating itself on the tank level started to drop at an alarming rate. We were loosing oil at a massive rate, which would have totaled to around 2000 liters/day. This type of leak leads to a total halt in rolling which means a substantial financial loss occurs every hour after steel rolling is stopped. After some scrambling around the mill luckily we located the leak, which didn’t make us feel any better as the leak had appeared on a pipe, which was running through a wall and oil was running out of it like a fountain. In a situation like this I found myself suddenly lost and totally out of ideas as I was supposed to finish work in about 15 minutes but my colleague who had been scrambling around the mill with me had a Eureka moment and came up with the idea of catching the oil and somehow taking it back to tank, following the pipes around it we discovered that the pipe under the leakage was running back to the storage tank. Brain storming on how to execute such a simple idea we found a pressure sensing guage on the pipe below it and hence took it out to make an opening in the second pipe while my colleague hammered a tun dish, he had found lying around into a funnel like shape. This solution was so simple and but so effective because as a result we caught majority of the
leaking oil in the tun dish and redirected it into the other pipe, this situation is a perfect example of innovation and creativity in maintenance which may seem simple but under pressure of and with limited resources it is an achievement in itself.
I don’t know if it was my lack of experience or creativity that I think if I was faced with a similar situation I would have failed to come up with a solution within fifteen minutes and execute it so perfectly, however it did teach me the importance of calm nerves under pressure, using every resource possible because there will be many incidents where the proper equipment might not be available and also that I needed to develop a mindset of thinking outside the box which is what a true engineer needs to do.
A lot of my friends think of maintenance work as more of a mechanics work not an engineers, my advice to everyone who is at university and at the beginning of there careers, is to get involved in whatever engineering work that they can find before making any assumptions, explore different possibilities before settling down instead of regretting there decisions and not to let any opportunity go unnoticed. As the saying goes ‘ the difference between dreams and achievements is purely desire.’
Going through some of the blogs it seems as if I am a bit out of place here as I am still half way through my degree and half way through my placement while the rest of the bloggers seem to be much more experienced but anyway.
To start off, more than a year ago I was faced with a dilemma, to do a work placement or just carry on with my course, most of my mates were facing similar problems. On one hand I had the opportunity to gain an insight of what I could be doing after I graduate on the other hand I could just finish my course and get it over with which at that moment in time seemed to be an attractive motivation, finishing my degree and finally getting rid of studying in other words awesome. However, I decided against it and now I realize it was one of the best decisions of my life. Reading an article in the telegraph I read that graduate unemployment in the UK is the highest since the 90s with one in five graduates still unemployed after months of job searching and with all the budget cuts, competition in an already near saturated job market is going to be tremendous, going through all this I decided I will do a work placement as I thought I am going to need some kind of edge over a graduate coming out of university and this could be it. Another incentive which was shining brighter than the sun at that time was that 1 in 5 placement student are offered a scholarship and a graduate job during their placement which I am still hoping to get through my company so fingers crossed for that.
However, this was only the first step on flight of stairs on a 3 storey building. The decision to do a placement was there but it didn’t turn out to be that easy there were several companies which were hiring but soon after I realized balancing job interviews, university work and the most important thing maintaining a social life wasn’t going to be as easy and above that doing some part time work can lead to a situation which is very close to a nervous breakdown. However the lengthy applications and the interviews did prove to be an invaluable experience as I had never done anything like this before and although my nerves use to overwhelm me in the beginning I did manage to build up my confidence and after my ‘sixth’ interview I finally got a placement, my point being that I would advise everyone to have some work experience before leaving university be it a summer placement or a full year placement because I was 1 of 10 students being interviewed for the placement I managed to get and if that is the kind of competition for a placement I assume it would be twice as hard to find a graduate job and looking at recent reports the economy is not trying to touch the sky.
Working, I also discovered that it was not even close to what I had pictured, real life situations which need urgent solutions tend to be really different to what we are taught at university although I am in no way saying that university isn’t important having theoretical background knowledge is always the first step. Think of it this way that if someone decides to learn French would he/she be better of going to France and trying to learn it or doing some background study and learning the basics and then going.
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