Being an Engineer
Being an Engineer
S1E40 How To Develop Products for Farmers & the NBA | Kailee Hanratty
Kailee shares with us several fascinating projects from developing rugged and reliable prosthetics for farmers to more efficient seating for NBA players, as well as test methods and fixtures to ensure the products work as intended. Also hear about what its like to work at Plexus Corp, one of the largest product development and manufacturing companies in the world.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.testfixturedesign.com and www.designtheproduct.com.
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About Being An Engineer
The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us
Welcome to the Being An Engineer Podcast. Our guest today is Kailee Hanratty, who holds a bachelor's and a master's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Colorado. She worked mainly in the she works mainly in the field of product development and has developed particular skill sets in SolidWorks modeling, prototyping and fixture design. Kailee, welcome to the show.
Kailee Hanratty:Hi, thank you for having me, Aaron.
Aaron Moncur:All right. So Kaley, first question, I asked everyone, what made you decide to become an engineer?
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah. So I think I have a bit of a unconventional background, I wasn't a huge Legos person, I didn't know that I was going to be an engineer from a little kid. My father actually is an electrical engineer. And he used to take me to take your kid to work day and I go there. And I mean, back then it was down in the basements of these dark buildings, old buildings, all old white guys. And I was like, there's, there's no way I'm gonna be an engineer.
Aaron Moncur:Oh. old white guys.
Kailee Hanratty:So so yeah, I went all the way up till probably January of high school, not really giving engineering a real thought. I was always pretty good at math and science. But I really wanted to play soccer, was interested in in rocks, geology, that sort of thing. Maybe thought I wanted to be a doctor. But I realized that when it came to my own blood and guts, I was pretty pretty okay with it, I thought it was pretty neat. But I got serious sympathy pains, looking at anybody else has injuries, like football players on TV, that sort of stuff. So I figured I should probably turn away from from being a doctor, and was actually at my tour at CU Boulder, and saw a presentation from the Civil Engineering Department on Engineers Without Borders, and thought, 'Hey, this is something I hadn't really considered before. I didn't know there was all these different types of engineering out there. And engineering is really just another way to help people. If I can't help people, as a doctor, maybe this can be my outlet.' So I actually started at CU, as a civil engineer in the civil engineering department, and had a really awesome freshman year project we worked with imagine in Boulder, with a young adult who had a social disability. And he had some issues, knowing when to follow social cues and knowing how to have his voice at an appropriate level for the situation he was in. So we actually made a device that had five colors, and a little microphone that you could just clip on your shirt. And it would light up the color scale according to how loud you were talking. And it actually had a potentiometer on the back that you could adjust the sensitivity. So say he was in a room with a lot of people, you could turn down that sensitivity and make him have to speak louder in order for the higher higher lap levels to to light up as opposed to a quiet room. Just a conversation with two people. So thought that was really me.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, that's awesome. So he looks at the lights, right?
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah
Aaron Moncur:Depending on how many lights are on, he knows I'm talking too loud or not loud enough?
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah, yeah. And deliver that to him at the end of the
Aaron Moncur:Very cool Dad's so smart like that. project, which, which was awesome. And looking back, I was like, 'That had nothing to do with civil engineering
Kailee Hanratty:I know, right, engineers. And so yeah, I went whatsoever.' But I was like,'Okay, that's just freshman year, we'll be fine.' And then it was my my sophomore year, I gave tours around see a lot to incoming freshmen or people who were thinking about coming to join the school, and gave a tour of the mechanical engineering space that they called the idea'Forge.' And there I saw the machine shop, I saw the junior project, which was making a drill powered vehicle. So the students had to using a drill power vehicle to either do a drag race or an endurance race or a hill climb, stuff like that. And again, I was like,'Ah, this has nothing to do with engineering. I might be in the wrong engineering, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do.' So I talked to my dad and atter of fact, he was just ike, 'Why don't you switch?' a d had never even considered co e up to me that that would be n option. to my guidance counselor, and it was right at that perfect sweet spot to where it was all those prerequisite courses that applied nearly perfectly into mechanical, mechanical engineering and switched right over my second semester of sophomore year and been loving it ever since.
Aaron Moncur:Nice. It's interesting that so many people I've talked to when I asked them, 'Why did you decide to become an engineer?' A lot of them say to help people. And I had never really thought of engineering in that way. Of course, engineering does help a lot of people. But typically, if you think about, I want to help people, so I'm going to become doctors, healthcare worker, counselor, therapist, these are more typical answers. But so many of us say I became an engineer to help people and it's a really interesting perspective that I hadn't fully appreciated before starting this podcast. Oh, quick. Okay, just really real total sidetrack here.
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:Have you ever fainted?
Kailee Hanratty:I don't think so.
Aaron Moncur:When you were talking about the blood and guts, and it was fine with you, but you couldn't really handle it with other people. Maybe
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:This time I had blood drawn. And I've never I mean, nobody enjoys getting their blood drawn.
Kailee Hanratty:Sure.
Aaron Moncur:I've always been a little queasy just seeing it and stuff. And this one time, I had my blood drawn and I looked down. And the next thing I remember, my head was rolled all the way back into my seat and I had, I had fainted I was out for like, a minute. It was the weirdest sensation like I I never fainted before. And I haven't ever since but it was the weirdest thing, just fainting.
Kailee Hanratty:I don't I don't think I've that had that happen to me. I think it's more of like a morbid curiosity but not that full on I, I really want to look at somebody who's broken bones or, or the inside of their body. So I can I can watch myself get blood drawn and that sort of thing. But
Aaron Moncur:I attended a cadaver lab when I was in college, and I thought that was fascinating. Not just like picking the little fat off the bones and looking at all the different organs and the anatomy. But yeah, my own blood for some reason just does it. Not good. All right. Something interesting that I noticed on on your LinkedIn profile was that you had a 4.4 GPA in high school, which is incredible. Like, I think I had maybe like a 3.2 or something you had like it in the in excess of the limit of 4.0, which is already incredible. But you also had all of these extra curricular activities, right? I mean, it seems like you were just into you're doing all sorts of stuff in high school was his high school just super easy for you or, or it was hard in the result was you're just busy like 24/7 always doing something.
Kailee Hanratty:Um, I think I've always held myself to a higher bar and a higher standard. And I've I found that when I'm busier seem to be more proactive, like even even going into college. And that big change my 19, 20 credit semester was was better than my 15 credit semester. And I think it was just because I'm so busy that I'm at that, that state of being stimulated and engaged and it just keeps pushing me forward. So I'd like to think that was the same thing back in high school. In hindsight, I think the schooling itself was was maybe on the easier side. I mean, I definitely had had my courses that were difficult, but things seem to come naturally, then college was a bit different. Definitely started getting some, some C's and D's on tests, even though I didn't really understand the curve at that point. But taking that at face value coming from A's a pluses, I was like, there's there's got to be something wrong with me. I must not be cut out for engineering. And that first semester of freshman year was definitely an adjustment coming from the 4.4 and getting B's and classes. I was like, what's going on?
Aaron Moncur:Like I can relate to that not coming from a 4.4 GPA in high school. But the first couple semesters chemistry for sure. That was a big one with the curve. And I think I got I don't know if I got, well, there was another class there was a was a physics class
Kailee Hanratty:Physics? That was my
Aaron Moncur:Electromagnetism. That's what it was. I don't think I got better than a D on any test all semester. And I ended up with a B in the class.
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah, yeah, I think through physics one and two. And on all of our midterms, I got 68. And there were multiple choice. So it meant that I was missing the same number of questions every single time, which was so frustrating. At that point, I was like, 'I'd rather miss one more than get another 68.' But the averages kept getting lower and lower. So I guess technically, I was getting better. And finally, the last test of physics two, I got an 18 and I was so dang proud.
Aaron Moncur:Nice. That's awesome. I think this is a good opportunity to share something that a guy I knew growing up, he was a family friend and he was an engineer himself. And before I started college, he told me,'Hey, now Aaron, it's gonna be really hard in college, but you need to remember that once you graduate and become an engineer, it's not the same kind of difficulty. College might be harder for you than your career as an engineer.' And I remember one, one test, specifically where I just bombed the test. I think it was a physics test. Actually, I walked out and I was so dejected and thought to myself, I don't know if I'm doing the right thing with engineering here. Maybe I need something easier. This is really hard. And I remember remembered the words that that guy had told me and it was, it was inspirational for me and I say,'You know what, I'm just gonna plow through through this. I'm gonna, I'm gonna finish it.' And hopefully, once I get into industry, it's not going to be as just incredibly demanding as is I feel like school is and that has been true for me. So for all you college students out there that that think man engineering is just too hard. I'm never gonna get this. Just keep going. And it gets I think a lot better once you graduate.
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah, yeah, definitely. Hang in there. I mean, I don't know what it's like at other schools but going into CU I heard from some some older friends who were an engineering that was like freshmen and sophomore year, those year, your weed out classes they're trying to see who can who can hang tough, like even if things aren't looking super good, who's who's willing to put in the work and push through? And then yeah, you get to those later years, and you start getting take classes that are, are more specialized to what you want to do and smaller classes. So you're not just a face in a sea of 300, 400 people in a big physics lecture that
Aaron Moncur:Right
Kailee Hanratty:So yeah, it definitely is tough, but but worth the push in it. It really shows you that the cap caliber of people come in on engineering school.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. And the other thing it does, I think is it teaches you how to learn, right? I think engineers are probably some of the best learners on the earth because of the rigor that we have to go through in school.
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah, I took some anatomy and physiology classes and in my junior senior year, because I was trying to go towards the the biomedical route, which I did a little bit when I worked at Plexus. And that was was tough. But it was mostly memorization, right? Like memorizing which bones in which muscles
Aaron Moncur:Yeah
Kailee Hanratty:And cause and effect of these things, which I think I'm I'm really good at you make your flashcards and you study and it's, there's an answer. And with engineering. Even though the problems in school, there's a correct answer, there's really not one way to get there. And true in real life in real engineering, there's not one answer to to a problem you're trying to solve. And I think that that makes it difficult, but also also a lot of fun.
Aaron Moncur:Exactly. Yeah. I agree. 100%. Well, there are a couple of projects that I want to ask you about. One was I think you were maybe an intern here, but it was a working on the the farm arm project. And you developed you helped to develop a more accessible, durable, upper limb prosthetic for farmers. What can you tell us about that project?
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah, so I was working with a guy named Danny Walsh from Northeastern University, I believe, in his senior project when he was in school was developing this system and a big thing with amputees is the majority of that population actually come from a farming background. It
Aaron Moncur:Really? The majority of amputees come from a farming background?
Kailee Hanratty:Don't, I, don't quote me on that.
Aaron Moncur:Okay. All right.
Kailee Hanratty:Maybe a big portion of them.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, asterisk there.
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah, asterisk. I might have to look that up later. But regardless, a big portion of amputees
Aaron Moncur:Interestesting.
Kailee Hanratty:Farming is a lot more dangerous than I think I ever realized. And then the prosthetics that are for the the standard and beauty are super tricked out right. I mean, they're they're going towards these electronic like super dexterous replaced hands basically. And for a farmer that that needs something rugged and durable and can get wet. That's just not the solution.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah
Kailee Hanratty:So it was actually taking a step backwards from your traditional hook prosthesis or anything like that and and trying to make something that was a simple plug and play. So what I was working on was different methods of clamping the device on to stay a stick shift or a steering wheel for a tractor say, and and really the prosthesis would be a post and the receptacle would be plug and play just a socket so that they could turn the wheel or was it yeah, it was really focused on on that rugged durability and not something super fancy that was going to cost the farmer a ton of money. While also probably going to break the first time they tried it in the field or get dirty, get dirt in there, that sort of thing. So
Aaron Moncur:So there were maybe a family of products, each one focused on like a steering wheel or a stick shift or whatever it was, and they all mounted somewhat rigidly to that thing. And then there's just a common interface where the the the prosthetic would insert interface with with the, whatever it was, clamping onto this steering wheel.
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah. So I was, that was a small my first internship while I was trying to also do school, so it was a limited number of hours. But I was the majority of what I was working on was trying to figure out that that clamping interface so I was looking at like the barbell clamps that holds the weights on while you're trying to do squats, I was looking at the tie system on a snowboard boot that that cinches that boot closed, stuff like that, trying to see what was going to be cost effective and also robust and sturdy to to keep that that fixture on whatever it was clamped to.
Aaron Moncur:I love that approach. I think that is a great, that's a best practice in general for designing new products or new mechanisms anyway, no sense reinventing the wheel. Right? Let's take a look at products or devices in other spaces outside of the specific space that we're working in and borrow from them. How has this problem already been solved somewhere else that we can take and apply to our specific application?
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah, especially as, as a junior not really having any other internship experience? Still not really getting down into the nitty gritty design classes yet? I was like, 'Okay, what works? What is somebody already engineered that that I know is going to function how we need it to and how can i i tweak that to hopefully work in our in our application?'
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, very smart. Okay, another project I want to ask you about, let's see, were the communications director for a team that developed a new kind of basketball bench chair. First off, what is the normal chair like and how is your team is different. And if you could talk a little bit about the the biometric measurements that your team did and how they were used in the analysis of variance to validate your design?
Kailee Hanratty:Sure. Yeah. So my my senior projects, we worked with the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team, and their director of performance was noticing all other guys coming off the bench where we're coming off slow, they were getting injured more often. And if you look at the standard basketball bench chair, they're really just those foldable chairs made for someone, maybe my height or your height, but certainly not for someone who's six and a half, seven feet tall. So all those guys if you look on the sideline, they have their knees up by by their ears and our team doing the research. Obviously, if you have your your knees pinched at less than a 90 degree angle, you're you're cutting off blood supply to your muscles and your bones. And then those guys are having to come off the bench and expect it to perform right away. So we looked into angle of your back angle of your knee. And then there was also the heating element of the chair. And we determined that I believe it was 40 to 42 degrees Celsius, skin temperature correlated to an optimal muscle temperature for performance. The other way of getting muscle temperature would be a probe in the muscle. So we figured out that that was probably not going to be the what, what the athletes were looking for.
Aaron Moncur:That my reduce performance even further.
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah, so we we made an adjustable chair. First off, our early prototypes just sort of had like an office chair piston. And then we embedded some heating elements into into the chair cushions and then everything from from the seat angle dropped down a little bit so that your knees were at a good position and then the back angle, not too far forward or, or anything like that. And we one of our team members, she was on the women's basketball team there at CU. So she had a lot of connections with the volleyball team, her her team, the men's team, all the all the tall people on campus. So we used them to test our prototypes, ask them which one feels better, that sort of thing. And then to quote unquote, 'prove' that our design was better. We did a series of tests We did a shuttle run timed, we did a vertical jump. And then we we measured skin temperature using a thermal gun, both with the current bench chair and then our bench chair. And we were only able to get just barely a statistically significant sample to prove prove some of these things, but we ran a multiple ANOVA test and and did find that our chair improved performance, which was pretty neat.
Aaron Moncur:Oh, what a great, what a great feeling.
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah, and ultimately that the Bucks adopt, adopted our design, and they they were building a new stadium at the time. So the first row of seats, they elevated a little bit to account for the adjustable bench chairs so that those those fans in the first row wouldn't have an object obstructed view. And yeah, they have them in in their new stadium now and there's been
Aaron Moncur:Wow, that's fantastic.
Kailee Hanratty:There's been tweets, there's been LinkedIn posts, there's been a little specials on ESPN and it's started out as Milwaukee Bucks developed us saying and it's slowly expanded to there flashing a picture of us on there and going out for years so
Aaron Moncur:Nice
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah, it's been pretty cool
Aaron Moncur:What a great experience.
Kailee Hanratty:A lot of classmates during that were like, 'Oh, you're just you're just building a chair.' But I, it really was my first introduction to like a product development and prototyping and making the drawings and doing user research and testing, validating. So it was a lot of fun, awesome team, and then to actually see it being used and other teams are trying to purchase bench sets from the box since the Bucks own on that property.
Aaron Moncur:Oh, they have a patent on it, huh?
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah. Yeah, it's it's pretty neat.
Aaron Moncur:That's very cool. Wow, what a terrific experience. Well, this is a good point to take a quick pause. testfixture.design.com is where you can learn more about how we help medical device engineering teams who need turnkey custom test fixtures or automated equipment, to assemble, inspect, characterize or perform verification or validation testing on their devices. And our company is Pipeline Design & Engineering. Today, we're speaking with Kailee Hanratty. And maybe let's jump fast forward a little bit to your time at Plexus Corp. For those who don't know who Plexus is, can you talk a little bit not not yet about your, the project experiences there, but just a little bit about Plexus as a company. And then after that, we'll jump into what your role was there. But tell us about plexus. Who are they? What do they do?
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah, yeah. So Plexus is a contract, both design and manufacturing company. And something that really sets them apart is sort of their focus on the the full product development stream. So they have, they do work on early conceptual stuff, they have awesome industrial design team that, that works with a customer to make sure that it's not just ticking the boxes from an engineering perspective, but that the end user is actually gonna want to use the product and know how to use a product, you can have something that meets all your requirements, quote, unquote. But if if the person who's supposed to use it doesn't know what they're supposed to do with it or hates it, it's it's a worthless product, right? So yeah, did a did a ton of work, making sure that there was a solid direction for the product, not just from an engineering perspective. A lot of prototyping stuff they have in house machine shops, 3d printers, all the funds we like to like to play with. Yeah, and then all the way through doing manufacturing, and even that post manufacturing support. So really, any step of the way, if if someone had a back of the napkin drawing, and was really looking for that full support, or if they had a fully developed product and just was looking for a manufacturing partner. Plexus could really step in wherever there.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, so a lot of contract product development firms are there like, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 people, somewhere in that range? You don't see very many that are bigger than that. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that that is not the case at Plexus. It's a substantially larger than that.
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah, it's it's definitely a bit bigger there. Our Boulder Design Center had about 100 people, maybe about 90 engineers, and then there's seven design centers. Tons of manufacturing sites. And I mean, just manufacturing alone is is 1000s of people. But we had several 100 engineers throughout the company,
Aaron Moncur:That must have been a fun place to work just because everything's vertically integrated, and you have so many resources at your disposal. Did you always feel like you just you had all the resources you needed? What was that like?
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah, I mean, definitely, as a new engineer, that the first program I was on, I got to start with it sort of at its inception, and, and see it through two different iterations of prototypes. So it was really nice to know that you're not just working on this one little piece, and then it gets booted off to somewhere that you don't get to know that the end result of So yeah, I mean, getting to design stuff, not really knowing what I was doing at first being able to go 3D print it or use a rapid prototyping shop and get it in house and realize that it inevitably isn't going to work since that was often the case with with my first designs, and just being able to go into the machine shop and, and put a new hole there, tap something or have somebody use teach me how to use the, the lathe or the mill and get to fix things and learn real time is really awesome. And also just, you weren't siloed off into mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, and you weren't separated by by whole buildings, you were sitting right next to the people that you were working with, we had a lot of collaboration spaces and even like a co working room and in our new building. And so when the project was really in a in a ready to grind phase of the program, everybody who was working together on that team move into that room. So it was just a matter of asking a question over a computer, instead of having to get up and go find them, you could all just sit there and collaborate lifetime which which was awesome. And they're really big on cross design center collaboration. So I was working with people in our Neenah Wisconsin Facility or in Raleigh, and then also working with customers globally. So learning how to work with with different time zones and different schedules, and maybe even different languages or accents and trying to navigate that. So I really felt like I I learned a ton and got a lot of exposure to what it meant to be an engineer.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, I bet. Something I've been thinking a lot about lately is how, how do we best manage a product development project. And personally, I don't love hierarchy and the bureaucracy. And so I'm always looking for ways to cut out those things, hierarchy and bureaucracy. And I love the idea of a flat organization. And we had a guest on little while Reed Harper over at priority designs, just an awesome guy. And he shared a little bit about how they work. And they have a very flat organization structure them and it works fantastically well for them. What was the the organization like at Plexus? Where were this? Was there a lot of hierarchy? And PMs and VPs of R&D and all that sort of thing? Or was the design environment? I don't know, more organic? Or you mentioned there was a lot of like, cross cross press working? What? What was the program management and structure like there?
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah. So I mean, like any company, there's definitely titles.
Aaron Moncur:Sure, yeah
Kailee Hanratty:Two years of experience and salary and what have you. But I found as an intern, and then a brand new engineer, if you expressed interest in something and a willingness to work hard at it, they were very willing to give you a shot and support you in whatever way they could. So as a brand new engineer, working on that, that first program, I ultimately ended up being one of the build leads for our prototype build of about 30 units. So I was the first person to have interest to put together a prototype and make a build document and train people who were 3, 5, 10 years older than I was in how we were to build our prototypes and the little tips and tricks there. was able to train interns I developed a procedure for for one of the more tedious parts of our assembly. So even though I was, I was the new kid, I was able to to grow and there was really a steep learning curve, however steep I wanted to make it which which was awesome. I didn't feel like I was stuck grabbing coffee as an intern or doing the little menial tasks as a as an engineer one, I felt like I was a truly a contributing member of the team.
Aaron Moncur:That sounds like a terrific place to work.
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah. And that really continued into into the other couple projects I was able to work on as well.
Aaron Moncur:I think one of the projects you worked on there, and I wanted to ask you specifically about this was some sort of test fixture for PCB Assemblies. And it ended up shaving a bunch of hours off whatever process some kind of manufacturing process, test fixtures, that's a large percentage of what we do at Pipeline. So I love test fixtures and equipment and talking about that sort of thing. Tell me about that project. And what was the challenge you're trying to solve? And how did the fixture solve it?
Kailee Hanratty:Sure, yeah. So the project this was for was the first project that I worked on. And it was a cardiac atherectomy device. And so basically, if if you have a blockage in your heart, traditionally, they would do open heart surgery, some sort of bypass, right. And that's dangerous surgery being completely open a lot of recovery time. So this was a non invasive alternative to that. So basically, they would go in through either at your wrist or in your femoral artery. And basically, it was like a little Dremel tip on the end of a little catheter, and the device would spin this little, little diamond and crusted Burr the end of this catheter at 100,000 RPM, and basically drill
Aaron Moncur:Wow, 100, 000 RPM
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah, drill out the plaque from your heart.
Aaron Moncur:So is the plaque very hard?
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah, that this device would work on calcified plaque. And for for testing purposes, our customer would use bone samples. So when it gets calcified in there, it's as hard as human bone
Aaron Moncur:Really, and it's in the arteries, which the arteries themselves are fairly like noodles almost, aren't they?
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah. So it's, it's not good to have something hard like that in there even besides just it being a blockage, I mean, having some hard and such thin, thin artery walls is is definitely dangerous.
Aaron Moncur:How do you agitate or wear wear down the plaque without damaging the artery given the drastic differences in hardness between the two?
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah, so our customer, obviously did extensive research on the catheter side of things, we did the control unit for the catheter. But they did all this testing and finding that sweet spot and speed and torque at the end of that burn. And with the diamond encrusted burned combination with all of that, it was able to not touch the artery
Aaron Moncur:Interesting Somehow the balance just perfectly,
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah, but it was such a delicate balance that if if the control unit slowed down too much and and got stuck in in the calcified lesion, or, or frayed, the little guide wire it was on it could quickly turn into an emergency open heart situation. So yeah, definitely walking on on eggshells to strike that, that fine balance and stay within that operation window. So yeah, with the fixtures there were, believe three actually four different PCBs in the unit. And we had such a small form factor that I mean, we had one PCB on its side, we had one mounted vertically to the upper clamshell of our device, we had another mounted on the back of the motor, another on the front of the motor tied in and there's all these cables in there. And there was also top and bottom sides to these boards. So just just sitting on a bench with with the cables, and you weren't really getting the full effect and the full functionality of the board. One of the boards had sensors to tell which which mode the device was in using magnets and Hall Effect sensors, and those had to be mounted at a specific distance and specific angles to trigger at the appropriate times. So I made this fixture that held all of their boards in in the appropriate orientations relative to the each boards and and basically made it like a deconstructed control device with just the boards that the PCB designers of the electrical team could could probe things where they need to probe things and essentially simulate full full surgery full procedures with with that text test. fixture.
Aaron Moncur:Cool. So it would set up the PCBs all in the the appropriate positions. And the technicians could test them out, make sure they were working and then just shuttle it right into the device.
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah, yeah. So they were able to do all of their, their bring up testing their, their debugging in that fixture, and then everything was set to go and to be assembled into the boards. I was able to make a couple of those. And I remember early on one of our electrical engineers really advocating to our project manager, like, 'Hey, I know, I know this is going to take X amount of hours for Kailee to put this together.' But yeah, what I say 20, 40 plus hours saving on the PCB bring up time.
Aaron Moncur:That's huge
Kailee Hanratty:And that's obviously, yeah, obviously that that initial cost of me designing outweighed all of that.
Aaron Moncur:Oh yeah, just goes away entirely.
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:You mentioned that you have you like test fixtures, you'd like designing test fixtures, what is it about test fixtures that you like?
Kailee Hanratty:So it's probably going against what I should say, as an engineer, but I think you can get away from a lot of the standard rules and things that you would need for machining apart or or injection molding apart. And you can really do some some elegant things and reduce part count and do weird surfaces and everything with like a 3D printed fixture attached to two metal plates or what have you like our that cardiovascular surgery device. From our industrial design team, they had very intentional organic surfaces on the outside of the handle that would fit nicely into the the physician's hand and be able to be passed really easily during surgery. So they did not want us to to mess with that intentional design on the outside. So creating a lot of fixtures for those were being able to interface with those, those really precise shapes. So being able to just do an offset surface and have this super swoopy 3D printed thing that just was a perfect clamshell for the outside of this device
Aaron Moncur:Nice
Kailee Hanratty:Making so much easier than trying to have six different metal pieces that were partially hopped out, but then really fit and then trying to clamp all those together. So
Aaron Moncur:Yes, I know exactly what you mean. We see what some of our customers were just doing. Throwing together a quick holder, they'll have 8-20 rails and toggle clamps, and we've seen tape and all sorts of things to hold these devices in place. But when you can use the actual organic surface of the device itself, do a little offset surface there cord out of the 3D printed holder and just maybe put one toggle clamp to hold it in place that thing is rock solid, it's not going anywhere.
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah, I was able to do a ton of stuff with yeah, those offset surfaces and then putting like a real fine foam in there and just being able to squeeze it together. And we're able to use those test fixtures on on an instrument machine for doing different types of tests and stuff like that. So even though it might have been more rudimentary, and in maybe some people's eyes just ignoring a lot of rules, I think I was able to get some really elegant solutions that will do what we needed.
Aaron Moncur:Very cool. What are what are some of the biggest challenges that you face at work?
Kailee Hanratty:I think definitely early on. Knowing that it's okay to ask questions. Like I mentioned earlier, I feel like I've always held myself to a higher bar and going into into Plexus as my first job. I I felt like people expected me to know a lot more than I actually did. So it made me nervous to admit when I didn't know things. And I thought that asking questions. was a sign of me being weak or dumb. When really, I think it might have been robbed on me, he told me but he said that the smartest people are the ones who asked the most questions. So getting over that hurdle that like not knowing doesn't mean I'm dumb or stupid. It just means I haven't had that experience yet. And knowing that it's okay to ask questions that I'm really just seeking more information and wanting to know things is actually is really powerful.
Aaron Moncur:I agree. 100%. I had a great conversation with previous guest, Trey Bobo, we talked about being vulnerable. And I think asking questions is a form of being vulnerable. And what's interesting and maybe counterintuitive, right? You and a lot of people, right, myself included, all of us is human nature, I think to, to feel like if we're asking questions, people are gonna think that we're not as smart as we should be, or whatever. And really, when, and I guess the reason we think that's bad, people are gonna think we're not, we're not smart. And we think that's bad, because we want people to like us, right?
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah
Aaron Moncur:Humans want other people to like us. In reality, I think that when you're vulnerable, and you, you ask people questions, and and you demonstrate, 'Hey, I don't know, everything I need, I need some help with this.' That's when that's when you present yourself as being a very genuine individual. And that is that is when people I think, are more inclined to to like you, right? When when they sense that level of genuine. Yeah
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah. And I've I've definitely found that obviously, this this barrier is is all in my mind. And every time I've asked a question, people have been so willing to help and share their knowledge. And I mean, if you think about it being being a new engineer, working with people that have 5, 10, 15, 20 years of engineering experience, and we really be ashamed to not leverage what they know, like you said earlier. You don't want to reinvent the wheel, if they've been there, done that a million times, and they can save you and then ultimately, the customer if you're doing some sort of contract work time, just by me asking one question, instead of struggling for hours and wasting time and money. It's, it's so valuable.
Aaron Moncur:Absolutely. Yeah, I agree. 100%. Well, Kaylee, we should probably wrap things up here. One last question. How can people get ahold of you?
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah. So if if you want to go the direct route, email, I check email all the time. So it would just be kailee.hanratty@gmail.com. Also on on LinkedIn, as well, really, however, you want to get a hold of me. It's perfect.
Aaron Moncur:Awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much, Kailee, for hanging out for 40-45 minutes or so and swapping some stories back and forth. It's been a lot of fun.
Kailee Hanratty:Yeah, thank you for having me. I was nervous at the beginning, but I had a lot of fun.
Aaron Moncur:No one could tell, you sounded great. I'm Aaron Moncure, Founder of Pipeline Design & Engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please leave us a positive review. It really helps other people find the show. To learn how your engineering team can leverage our team's expertise in developing turnkey custom test fixtures, automated equipment and product design, visit us at testfixturedesign.com Thanks for listening.
