General Inspection
Position: Field Service Technician
Dates: Sept. 2006 – May 2007
General Inspection is a manufacturer of precision sorting machines. While they were branching out into other industries even while I was there, the primary use of the sorting machines was in the metal fastener industry (e.g., bolts, nuts, washers, etc.). The machines used lasers, cameras, and electrical currents to inspect parts passing through the machine, and in a fraction of a second make a determination if the part was within defined manufacturing tolerances or defective. The parts would then be be sorted by the machine based on the determination.
As a field service technician I was tasked with the installation and maintenance of the systems at customer sites. The customer sites were primarily manufacturing facilities where the metal fasteners were produced. As a manufacturing itself, General Inspection was small-scale with a small team that hand made every system custom for the customer. On the other hand, though, the manufacturing facilities which used our equipment, and where I spent most of my time, were generally very large-scale manufacturing operations. It was incredibly informative having the experience of working in so many manufacturing environments of different type and size.
Responsibilities
- Installation of sorting machine equipment at customer sites
- Also performed setup and trial run of equipment at General Inspection prior to shipping
- Training customer personnel on use / general maintenance of the equipment
- Performing maintenance on sorting machines (preventative and corrective), including parts feeders
- Troubleshooting machine issues and / or failures
- Occasional troubleshooting of PCBs down to component level
Skills / Tools
- Hand tools
- Power tools
- Lasers
- Optics trains
- Mechanical troubleshooting
- Electrical troubleshooting
- MS Windows modification (registry editor)
- Visual Basic
- MS Office
- Word
- Excel
- PowerPoint
- Outlook
- Customer Service
- Time Management
- Project Management