We start work at 7 a.m. and work until 5 p.m. with a 30-minute lunch break. These are long days, but we only work 4 days a week. Our work is based on a work order system. Approved projects are assigned a work order, and we complete projects in the sequence they come in. When we get here in the morning, we decide what has to be done that day.

A lot of our work is prototype work given to us by science or engineering graduate students. They may not know exactly what they need for their research, so we try something. If it doesn’t work, we try something else. We work with a lot of science students who are not designers, so we may get sketches on notebook paper

Some projects are small; others are huge, like the gas turbine model we designed for researchers in Mechanical Engineering. This project took over 6,000 man-hours. We also programmed and machined a 3-D mold cavity that allowed Bioengineering researchers to produce their own knee implants. We are very proud of these projects because they will help researchers one day improve our lives.