I was quite nervous in the run up to beginning my 1 year placement at Buhler Sortex. Other than a small summer placement the previous year, I had little prior experience of engineering in industry. Whilst I felt that my knowledge of the course material was strong I was unsure how well it would translate in real life situations. I had received correspondence from the company regarding accommodation, travel to work and the surrounding area, as well as what I will be expected to wear and what time to arrive on my first day. This, along with learning more about the company and meeting some of my future colleagues on the interview day, made me feel far more comfortable entering a new place with a completely different group of people and routines.

I began the placement on the 14th of July. Much of the following 2 weeks was filled with introductions and basic training. I was introduced to the important (environmental, safety and business) regulations that must be followed by the company, including the formal process of patenting. This was something I had briefly touched on during my time at university, but having it explained with reference to real life examples helped to deepen my understanding of why and how patenting is involved in engineering.

I was also given an introduction to the validation process, including how it works, who performs validation on parts that are designed by the company and what the main aims of the validation process are.

My first 2 weeks did not however, just consist of training programmes and meetings. I was given other tasks for when there was no schedule training. From my first day I was introduced to Autodesk inventor (the company’s main CAD software)

By my 3rd day, I felt comfortable enough with the software to progress to something more challenging. I was asked to produce a very light visual model of one of the companies machines that could be used when designing plant layouts for customers. The thought that only 3 days into my placement, I would have the opportunity to produce work that will be used directly to help customers was exciting. Whilst this early responsibility was rather daunting, I felt that I was up to the challenge and would try my hardest to produce the work to the standard required.

In less than 2 weeks, I had finished this mini-project and had moved on to a more challenging project. I was asked to work on an enclosed, individual, customer driven, research project. This involved creating a new type of bracketry, to allow a higher level of machine customisation. This meant that the work I would do on this project would have a significant impact on the machines sold by the company, with products that I was designing going on to be used by customers. This placement has been very interesting and enjoyable so far, and I can’t wait to see what other work I will be working on as the placement progresses.

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