After learning to fly at a young age, Mark started his career in the aerospace industry designing parts and test equipment for aircraft. He then moved into automotive where he learned about hose routing and innovative ways to actively cancel noise within vehicles. At Levolor Home Fashions he helped develop the first cordless blinds to minimize safety risks for children. Now, as an application engineer at GoEngineer he helps others mechanical designers in the industry with SolidWorks training and troubleshooting.
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
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
After learning to fly at a young age, Mark started his career in the aerospace industry designing parts and test equipment for aircraft. He then moved into automotive where he learned about hose routing and innovative ways to actively cancel noise within vehicles. At Levolor Home Fashions he helped develop the first cordless blinds to minimize safety risks for children. Now, as an application engineer at GoEngineer he helps others mechanical designers in the industry with SolidWorks training and troubleshooting.
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
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
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. Enjoy the show.
Mark Downey:The one of the hardest things to learn to say is no. When you're when you're working for a team and they come up to you, Hey, can you go do this? Oh, yeah, I can do that. How can you do this? Oh, yeah, I can do that. And before and before you know it, you've got 10 jobs on your plate when you really can only handle two or three.
Aaron Moncur:Hello, and welcome to the Being an Engineer Podcast. Our guest today is Mark Downey he who holds a degree in mechanical engineering from the Missouri University of Science and Technology. Mark started his career in the aerospace industry, then moved into automotive and then product in tool design and currently works as an application engineer supporting SolidWorks training and troubleshooting mark, welcome to the show.
Mark Downey:Thank you, Aaron. It's nice to be here.
Aaron Moncur:So Mark, what motivated you to become an engineer?
Mark Downey:Good question. I didn't realize I was going to be an engineer 'til my senior year in high school to be honest. I grew up, my dad was a machinist for Transworld Airlines, TWA, here in Kansas City, and I grew up with around just him being a machinist. And he has actually a private pilot, private instructor flying instructor as well. And so I was actually learning to fly. And I started learning to fly when I was 16. And I thought, you know what, I got to my senior in high school and like, I was in drafting class. And one day, I turned around to a buddy behind me, I said, What are you doing after school? He says, I'm going to I'm going to University of Missouri, Rolla, it was called at the time, and I said, Oh, really, what do they do down there? He's like, engineering. So it wasn't to my senior year that I even thought about what I wanted to do. Um, my, my mom worked for AT&T. And she was working in an engineering group. She wasn't an engineer, but she was working in an engineering group. And she was asking some of the folks down there because I liked I was I've been doing drafting since eighth grade. So I was getting I was good at doing... Back then it was all pencil and paper
Aaron Moncur:Yeah.
Mark Downey:So, I was good at drafting. I enjoyed it. I liked the outcome of that. And I thought about being an architectural engineer. And my mom was asking some of the folks
Aaron Moncur:Excellent. that work. And they said, yeah, that's really competitive. You don't really, I don't want to go into that I'm okay. And I liked,
Mark Downey:Really, no, 12, I was a senior. I liked engineering, I like aerospace, because I like flying. And, and I like working on things too. So it's mechani al and back and forth. And bac and forth. And aerospa e is kind of niche. And so I st rted on mechanical. And when I pplied to university for a while I got accepted. And so that's ow it started.
Aaron Moncur:Yes.
Mark Downey:And I stuck with it. It took me five years, instead of four, to get through. But it has been a great decision for me.
Aaron Moncur:I feel like we're twins or spirit animals here, Mark, because I also did not decide until my senior year what I was going to do. And it also took me five years to get through my engineering curriculum. And okay, and drafting was one of the most enjoyable classes I took in high school. I think I'm just barely old enough that that was a class offered when I was in high school. I don't know maybe they still offer it. But now it's, I'm sure it's all computer back. When I did it, it was pencil and paper just like you. And I thought that was such a valuable class because it taught me how to visualize things in 3d is a huge skill for anyone who's in engineering or mechanical design, for sure.
Mark Downey:Especially if you're drawing because if you're trying to draw you back back when you had to create your isometric views and section views all manually you you had think you were thinking 3D and converting in your head. So like, that's why I find SolidWorks to be so intuitive, and we get more into that a little bit, I guess.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. Yep. Love SolidWorks. So you mentioned flying and I think that you are a private pilot these days. That was something that you're, you picked up from your dad?
Mark Downey:I yeah, my dad said he got me got on the armies, his VA bill to go get his private pilot's license and then went on to there to be an instructor certified instructor and taught for many many years. We, I grew up flying I was I was sitting in front of an airplane before I could see over the dash and so with my dad being with today, we got to travel around a little bit as well. So I just, I loved flying I love being up there. Don't get to do it too much anymore. It's it's a rich man sport, if I could say that, I don't I don't have the extra funds or an airplane to go fly. But so I spent a long time I'm still a private pilot, but you don't your license doesn't expire, but your your medicals do. But, but anyway, I love doing it. I flew from Texas for about 16 till out I got out of college, got out of college, got married and then started a family and flying wasn't in the cards anymore.
Aaron Moncur:Sure, that makes sense. Something, I don't fly, but something I really appreciate about flying is the the checklist right that the pilot goes through before he or she takes off. And it's such a powerful tool. I love checklists, I use them all the time with my team. Do you feel like from an early age, being indoctrinated with these these pilots preflight checklists? Do you think that's that's helped you? Or has there been any carry over into your engineering degree?
Mark Downey:Um, that's an interesting question. I think there has probably been some carryover. But yeah, the the checklist that you go through to make sure everything's ready to go. They're great tools. And I don't know that I have a map, a physical one that I use, but certainly, it's something you checklist, when you're going through a design, did I cover this? Did I cover this? Did I look at the stresses that I, if I if I captured the intent and all that, so, yeah, I can, I can see where that probably played into it.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. Okay. Well, one of your first jobs was at McDonnell Douglas in the aerospace industry. And I guess you designed a lot of sheet metal parts back then.
Mark Downey:Um, yeah, well, actually, I worked in I worked in the mechanical support equipment group.
Aaron Moncur:Okay
Mark Downey:And so we were responsible for designing equipment that was used to maintain the aircraft, things for holding a landing strut in place to get in position in the aircraft or for servicing it for loading auxiliary equipment onto the aircraft and, and that thing you installing, you're moving the engines and things like that. So it was support equipment more than sheetmetal. So
Aaron Moncur:Okay, got it, got it. Another part of your role there was analyzing aircraft mechanical systems and determining the equipment required to test and repair them, what you just mentioned, what, what are some of the systems that commonly required testing or repair and how are those repairs performed?
Mark Downey:one of the biggest projects I had, while I was there was actually one of the last ones I was there was work as a brake control valve for the T-45 Trainer for the Navy. They periodically, when they service those brake control valves, they have to put them through a series of tests to make sure that they're functioning correctly. And I designed a test panel back then wasn't a lot of hydro, mechanical and not much electrical. So I wasn't there, I did a large panel layout design that had hydraulic gauges and hydraulic valves for basically cycling this brake control valve through its different steps to make sure that it was working properly. So you would, you'd hook it up to the system with a we plug it all in and, and run it through turn the pressures on and off watch for resulting pressures on the other side, and that kind of stuff. So that's the kind of thing for specific equipment. When the aircraft I work aircraft, other aircraft I worked on was a flying wing that was started out to be a top secret project, but then fell through, but the wings folded up. So like on Sunday, a lot of the a lot of the aircraft on I think, with the FAA team, but some of them have the wingtips fold up for aircraft for carrier service so that they can fit them down below decks and stuff. When that wing is folded up, they would need to service the joint, the joints there, the mechanisms that fold the wing up and down. So they need ways to hold that wing in place. So it's a matter of looking at the structure finding out where can I support this while it's in a folded position so that they can remove part of it and put it back together. So that kind of thing. I got to design a piece of equipment for holding the nose stret on on the a 12 which was the flying wing we were working on. So when they wanted to remove it from the aircraft, they needed a fixture that could grab it at the right spot, clamp onto it, hold it securely so that they can remove the bolts from the aircraft and then lower it down and position that they could rotate it and positions and things like that. So it was just handling equipment.
Aaron Moncur:Got it. Interesting. Okay. So from there you moved on to a company called Dayco where they produced engine drive systems. And you worked I guess a lot on power steering hose assemblies?
Mark Downey:Yeah. So that was part of the day goes on automotive hoses and belts supplier and so I was power steering product. development engineer. So I got to work with Chrysler and Ford and GM, and, and help them in developing power steering hoses. And back then it was a matter of so I was working in Central Ohio and we travel up to Detroit, just about two or three times a week go up there and actually be on their books, as they call them their physical mock ups of the vehicle engine compartment. And they would have the power steering pump where they wanted it, and they'd have the gear where they didn't want it. And my role working with their engineers was to help route that hose from one point A to point B. And it would be, I'd be on there bending pipes by hand, you're getting them into the shape, we wanted to get to get from the pump to the gear, and then I would take those back and scan in we use we had a scanner, we would scan in the pipes to get the coordinates in the bands. And then and then we would make a mock up of that with the hose and everything, clamped it up and everything and we would take it back up and make sure it fit. And then documenting it from there. We also gotten into testing. One of the neat well of course with that was testing of the hoses and make sure that they would stand up to the life of the vehicle. One of the things I found interesting in that position was when you you don't you don't hear it on your vehicle, because it's been tuned out. But if it wasn't tuned out, when you turn your steering wheel in the car, you would hear the pump noise through the vehicle frame it would vibrate it, would you hear the moaning of the pump as you're turning the steering wheel. And one of the things that engineers tried to do was to get rid of that noise. And of course, it being a pump, it's got veins, so as it rotates, it would create a frequency. And there's methods of dampening that out using mechanisms inside the hose assembly to dampen out that frequency and make it quiet. And so that was an interesting aspect of that position that I got to experience, so
Aaron Moncur:That is very interesting, it's something you don't think about right? What noises are happening that I'm not hearing right now because they've been engineered away? What tools or mechanisms did you guys use to tune that noise out, is like some rubber padding or foam or something like that?
Mark Downey:Yeah, you'd be surprised. It's a steel cable a lot like, like, like an old, what comes to mind for me is a cable that used in speedometers. It's like the outside sheath of it. It's a flexible steel cable, what they would do, or what we would do is we would vary the length of that. So that that steel cable that has got a frequency resonant frequency to it, depending on the length of it. So what they would try to do is the pump has got so many veins turning it so many It was such a certain speeds, it's going to generate a certain frequency, you would try to find a resonant frequency in that system and then adjust the length of that interior component to a resonant frequency that would cancel out the frequency.
Aaron Moncur:Oh, how interesting.
Mark Downey:Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:Okay. So this is like noise cancelling earphones almost right? Where you got some audio input coming in, and then you have a signal that cancels that.
Mark Downey:Right.
Aaron Moncur:Very interesting. Yeah.
Mark Downey:It was, it was back then it was trial and error. I mean, they knew that I was working with Ford on this one. And it was on the the tourists actually, and or no, not the tourists the neon. Anyway, um, the they had a mannequin, they would sit in the right seat that had audio it was it was specifically designed to catch audio. And they were using digital tape and they would we would drive up and down this abandoned highway in the Everglades of Florida. And abandoned runway actually, and up and down the main runway and and they would record the noises and go through maneuvers, turning the car left and right and going up and down the runway. And and then we'd go back and they would analyze that digital frequency and look for spikes and in the sound and the frequency and say okay, here's here's the frequency here, we needed ended, we would adjust the cable, a quarter of an inch or half of an inch or whatever and make a new make a new hose bolted back up and go out and try it up and down again. So that was the process back then. So
Aaron Moncur:That was fantastic. What a great piece of engineering there.
Mark Downey:Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:Well, you've you've worked in automotive and aerospace, which are two of the major engineering industries in the world. Did you see many commonalities between the two industries or maybe even more interesting question was what what was different about them that maybe didn't need to be could have been applied from one to the other, but just wasn't because of, I don't know, tradition or history?
Mark Downey:Yeah, good question. In the automotive industry, one of the things that was one of my, well, I say one of my first introductions that I remember with that it within an hour automotive industry was the the see perhaps the the the the testing that they go through the level of documentation, just going through the different processes of validating the designs. It was, it's a very extensive process, obviously for vehicle, it was probably there in the aerospace world, but that was early in my career, I was probably a little man on the totem pole. So I didn't see a lot of those things. But I did actually get into geometric dimensioning and tolerancing. Early on back in back in '80,'89, '90 timeframe. I was trained in GD and T through through that. And so that was one of my first introductions to that. But I didn't see a lot of that kind of testing, but I'm sure it was there in the airframe area, but I was not part of that world. So you just a lot of documentation in both arenas.
Aaron Moncur:Sure. Yeah.
Mark Downey:Yeah.
Aaron Moncur:How about FMEA? That's probably something that was used in both right, and aerospace and automotive.
Mark Downey:Yeah, more so in the automotive world, they have very extensive FMEA is that was that was the one I was thinking about when he was actually was my first introduction to that was the FMEAs in the automotive world. I didn't see much of that in aerospace world, but I'm sure it was there.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, that's, that's interesting. I've worked just very, very little in automotive, but I have some experience there. And every time I have worked with an automotive customer, they always have an FMEA. And certainly, females are used in medical, and I assume aerospace and other industries as well. But I never saw it used as heavily as as apparently it's used in the automotive world. I wondered can you recall, I'm kind of putting you on the spot here. So if you can't think of an experience, that's totally fine. We'll just skip to the next question. But can you recall an experience where you used an FMEA and it really saved your bacon? Right? You guys, you guys saved a lot of time and money, because you identified during that FMEA? That maybe you wouldn't have otherwise?
Mark Downey:Good question. I, so I got experience with FMEA is in the automotive world back in'94, or '5 timeframe. And I didn't really touch FMEA again, until my last position with Hunter Douglas to just jump ahead of a few years, and I actually went and got a Lean Six Sigma greenbelt training. And, and we started using FMEA is there. And it's probably there where we benefited more from FMEA is the my experience with him was in my last position at Hunter Douglas, where we were, we were designing window coverings. So you think well, how critical can that be, but there are some safety aspects associated with window coverings, you definitely don't want it falling out of the window on to a consumer or anything like that, child safety and everything like that. So there's, there's a lot of safeties to safety in parts of window coverings that the FMEA allowed us to cover, and when you do when you fill out an FMEA, you're thinking you're you're trying to think outside of the box, what, what can possibly go wrong with this system? And how do we avoid it? And and that's really the benefit of it. And as far as anything specific, it just it made us think about every possible application of the window covering and in what you, we just got to make sure you can't so you can't hurt somebody. And so that was probably I just made sure that we thought of everything.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, it's interesting that you talk about the FMEA in the context of Hunter Douglas, which, like you mentioned, does higher end window treatments and coverings and blinds and shutters and things like that. Excuse me. But Hunter Douglas, you don't think of their products as being life sustaining or mission critical or things like that. But really FMEA is their risk mitigation strategy, right? And there's risk inherent in any product development project. So anyway, it's interesting to hear FMEA is used in in outside the typical medical or automotive industries. So, let's let's dive into Hunter Douglas. He spent quite a quite a few years there. I think it was maybe 15 years or something like that.
Mark Downey:The most, the most, 15 years, yeah.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, yeah. For me, anyway, mechanical engineering doesn't immediately come to mind when I think about window treatments. But that's actually not true, because there's quite a bit of engineering involved in that industry. I have just a small taste of that. I've seen how some of the inner workings work in these window treatments and coverings and and there's some interesting mechanisms involved some some rack and pinion gears and motors and things like that, that you just you wouldn't really think about had you not been exposed to the details of some of these products? Can you share a few of the more maybe challenging or interesting experiences or projects that that you encountered during your time there?
Mark Downey:Sure. My, I'm going to jump back just a little bit further. Hunter Douglas is my second foray into the window covering world. I actually worked for level or home fashions. Back in North Carolina first, and I was my product responsibility, there was metal horizontal blinds. And what you said you wouldn't think of engineering when I first talked about when I first interview was like, what kind of engineering do you need in windows covers? But you think about the head rails, the support, the shutter, the blinds in the window, that's a roll form the metal component? Well, you got to design that for roll forming you making yet an aesthetic piece? How do you design those features into it? I didn't get into to inside of it. But you can imagine the tooling side that's required to roll form something like that. There's a lot of design that goes into the equipment for designing for rolling that type of equipment. But one of the neatest things about the job there one of the biggest things I had in back there was child safety became important. Unfortunately, the cords that raise and lower shutter or wait reason or blinds are a safety hazard. And so one of the first projects or one of the biggest projects I got to do there was actually implementing a cordless lift system for horizontal blinds level or was one of the first ones to do it, I was actually involved with bringing that product to market. And and so, the designing the the balancing system in the product to be able to counterbalance because if you think about a metal blind as it is you raise the bar, the product gets heavier the bark because as you pick up each slat it gets heavier and heavier as it goes up. So the force raise it yeah increases as it goes up. And so the spring system that was designed to do that, I get to be part of that. And so
Aaron Moncur:I'm thinking something similar to a garage door opener. Was it that kind of mechanism?
Mark Downey:Similar well, similar, but a garage door opener, garage doors have consistent load from top to bottom, I mean, it's it's it is what it is at the massive
Aaron Moncur:Okay, it would be more complex
Mark Downey:bottom rail comes up. So the force starts out light at the bottom, because when you when you bring the system down and to the bottom, you don't want it's sliding back up. Like if you think about a window shade, if you pull a window, shade down and release it, it flips up to the flap, flap flap pop up at the top
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah.
Mark Downey:But you don't want that to happen to your blind, you want the blind to be able to you want to be able to stop that blind, whatever position take your hand away, and it stays there. So you're basically counterbalancing that load at whatever position it is consistently from top to bottom.
Aaron Moncur:It feels like a fun problem to solve.
Mark Downey:It was, it was a challenge. Again, I was part of the team, I didn't I didn't conceptualize the solution but I was part of finishing the solution and working with suppliers to bring the product to fruition working with doing all the testing and everything was set up a cycle tester and ran the blinds through 1000s and 1000s of cycles and make sure they were going to stand up over the lifetime and we all found design changes that we needed to make during that process and made those changes. So that was one of my neat ones now with Hunter Douglas, 14 years there and the shutter division we just we were designing shutter components in hardware and and I was also part of in that role I was part of making sure that the systems for configuring the shutters for the production floor were correct worked with the production floor to make sure that they understood what was being made, checking quality there was involved basically from the product from conception through delivery in some form or another. So it was it was a broad ranging role. A lot of great experience, I really enjoyed that position. It was it was a great great experience.
Aaron Moncur:Working with shutters and blinds and window coverings, I imagine you end up working with a lot of wood as well right there's plastic and metal but yeah, what is well what are some unique challenges associated with designing for wood that you don't encounter with plastic or metal?
Mark Downey:Well obviously wood is low absorb moisture, so controlling that wood so that it it doesn't warp or twist or go funky on you is is definitely a big challenge and you use a certain types of wood that, that will are less resistant to those types of effects but yeah, it was definitely a challenge. And yeah, I think about a shutter on you got a horizontal louver, is what we what the terms used in the industry. Those louvers, anything's gonna sag under its own weight after you get to a certain width. Right? So how do you how do you shape that louver? What's the what's the best profile for that to resist sag? And how wide can you go and it's never wide enough for the customer. They always want it to be wider. So that's the challenge is, how do you how do you make something wide enough to fit the consumers desire or and and still make it not go turn turn bad on you in the window or something.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, yeah. I hear some area moment of inertia calculations in there.
Mark Downey:Yep. Yep. And of course, it's the wrong direction, because it's a lot wider. Yeah, it's open. Yep. So yeah.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah. Okay, well, let's see what let me take just a quick pause right here and share with the listeners that testfixturedesign.com is where you can learn more about how my company, Pipeline, helps medical device engineering teams and other product companies who need turnkey custom test fixtures, or automated equipment to assemble, inspect, characterize, or perform verification or validation testing on their devices. We're speaking with Mark Downey today who currently works as an application engineer for Go Engineer. But before we get to that, I want to have just a couple more questions about your time at Hunter Douglas. One of the things you participated in at Hunter Douglas was Kaizen events. And a previous guest of ours, Rob Donley, who is just an amazing guy had talked a little bit about Kaizen when he was on the show, and I started learning a little bit about the philosophy since then, I wondered, can you share some of your experiences participating in Kaizen events and maybe a few pointers or suggestions for others who want to learn about and deploy Kaizen strategies in their work environments?
Mark Downey:Sure. So the Kaizen events that we used, the way we use them at Hunter Douglas, was it to improve production efficiencies. And so we would we go to the production floor, we would be looking at the work, the flow of the product through there, where we had, bottlenecks and things like that. So the Kaizen event was scheduled, generally, we would spend most of the time it was the most part of a week on site at the end of each production facility. And first day you'd be spent going through and you're just setting the process and taking notes and looking at meal, how many steps were they taking from this spot to that spot, where they was, or just where were the inefficiencies in the process. And, and then you would come back and generally would break into smaller groups, or there would be a team of maybe six or eight of us, and then we would break into smaller groups. And usually, okay, you're taking this part of the process, you're taking this part of the process, and everything from floor plan, floor layout, machine layout, everything that was up on the table for doing this, and you would study it and and try to see what can be done better. And a lot of times we were out there, the next day or two days later, moving, moving process, moving equipment around moving things around, changing the flow to where we noticed that this person is having to take 10 steps from here to there, and they only need to take they don't need to take any if we move this over to here. So it's a matter of just looking at that process and figuring out where how things could be better. So just on the floor looking at it and and at the end of the week, then we would take go back and say, 'Okay, it was taking 20 minutes before to make the shutter and now we're doing it in 10.' And that's the kind of thing we're looking for. So
Aaron Moncur:Did you ever watch the movie, I think the the name of the movie was The Founder about McDonald's and Ray Kroc?
Mark Downey:No, I don't think I have.
Aaron Moncur:It was a great movie, but I'm reminded of it now because towards the beginning of the movie, it shows the founders drying out on a basketball court in chalk outline the the positions of all the different elements within the restaurant, so are behind the counter anyway, the stoves were here that the hamburgers were there, the buns were here the condiments were there, the cash registers were here, and and then they, they would climb up on a ladder and look from a bird's eye view down on this chalk outline that they drawn and then they bring their employees in and say, 'Okay, do your thing. Pretend you're at work.' And they'd study it and they'd say, 'Okay, we're going to change this and move the stove there and with the condiments here.' Okay, do it again, do your jobs and watch from this bird's bird's eye view. And I didn't, I didn't really make that connection until just now but that was that was Kaizen what they were doing back then it's exactly what they were doing. It was fantastic.
Mark Downey:Interesting I have to look at that one.
Aaron Moncur:Yeah, it was a great movie outside of the fun engineering parts. Okay, um, let's see. So So currently you work as an Application and Support Engineer at Go Engineer where you assist customers with SolidWorks training and troubleshooting. Tell me, what what prompted you to take a job away from design and move into the the training realm of the industry?
Mark Downey:Well, I've been doing engineering. So like I said, since 1988, so 32 years now.
Aaron Moncur:Wow.
Mark Downey:I was looking at doing a retirement.
Aaron Moncur:Okay
Mark Downey:To be honest. Um, we had my wife and I had the opportunity to move to this farm in Northwest Missouri that we inherited. And we got the last of our four kids off on their own. And it's like, 'You know what, let's go have some fun.' So, the farm of Vincent Vega has been in my family since 1900. My grandpa and my dad were both raised here. And we wanted to take and go up here and restore it. So. But I've been using SolidWorks since 1997. I actually taught SolidWorks back in 1997. Ours came out in '95. So it was brand new back in '97.
Aaron Moncur:Wow. Yeah.
Mark Downey:And so I got I got the opportunity to actually work for a reseller back then back in North Carolina. And I was doing tech support and demos and, and training. And, and I love using SolidWorks. I just, it's just I found it to be very intuitive. And it's a tool that I love to use. I've been using it through the 14 years at Hunter Douglas. And when I left there, I wanted my own seat. And so I contacted the reseller here in Kansas City that sells out works, and I happen to be the same reseller that we were using at Hunter Douglas
Aaron Moncur:Oh, interesting.
Mark Downey:And I said, Oh, that's interesting. You guys are just getting here. Yes, guys. I didn't know you had offices in Kansas City. And they recently just set up offices. And I'm like, oh, well, in since I've been in this role before. I said, 'Do you have an application engineer in the current series? They said no we don't. This could be an interesting, interesting job. So I ended, I ended up applying for the job. And with my experience, on my past experience, I was a good asset for the reseller at the time, it was called The Side Solutions. The Side Solutions was acquired by, The Site Solutions have been around for 20 some years as well. They were ended up getting acquired by Go Engineer in August of 2018. And, yeah, and so on. Excuse me, I started in August 2010. They got acquired in August of 2019. So that's how I got to become an engineer. I love using SolidWorks. It's a tool that I find very intuitive. It's so powerful. It just the things you can do with it are incredible. People are designing just all sorts of stuff. And I enjoy helping other people figuring out if I do I work abroad is what is this tech support, where somebody is trying to do something, and it's ours isn't working. It's not doing, it's either not doing what they want it to or it's crashing is not doing whether something's failing. So I'll get involved with the tech support side to help them troubleshoot what's going on. And that can be anywhere from I am a certified SolidWorks expert CSWE. And I'm also a certified PDM specialist, and certified instructor, among others. So I love going in there and helping people troubleshoot it, whether it be a PDM thing isn't working right or whether they're trying to do a specific Lofton model. And it's not working right. But I also do mentoring. So one of the roles or one of the benefits of going junior authors is mentoring. So if somebody wants to learn how to do something, they can go to our website, they can look in a list and say, oh, there's Mark, and they can click on my calendar and say, oh, he's available at this time. And it puts a spot on my calendar. And I spend 30 minutes to an hour working with a customer trying to model something they're trying to model a specific manifold and they, they just don't know how to make it work like they wanted to. And so that's the role that I'm doing now. I also do PDM implementations, where I'm help people set up PDM and I help them manage their data. So multiple hats. I love the role. I love the capability. It's a job that allows us to work remote, which is in my case is terrific because I get to live my 180 acre farm here in the middle of nowhere, Missouri and still do a job that is beneficial to people and it's wonderful.
Aaron Moncur:That's fantastic. Well, working in such a support role, I'm sure that you've learned quite a few tips and tricks with solid words that that the rest of us could probably or should know about can use share a few best practices that that would be useful for other mechanical designers. Or maybe another way of asking it is what are one or two SolidWorks related tools that most of us don't know that we really should know?
Mark Downey:Oh, gosh, there's a lot of them. Um, save often. The S key is your favorite, it should be your favorite key when you're sketching.
Aaron Moncur:The S key. Love the S key.
Mark Downey:The S key for bringing up sketches. simulation is something that comes with SolidWorks. There's three different levels of SolidWorks. The premium and professional versions both have SimulationXpress, and an engineer should be familiar with even if they're not, and I'm not enough, I'm not a finite element analysis, I'm not a stress related person. So when it comes to analyzing as is still a good tool to use to just get familiar with the all you're designing something and you want to see you put it under what you expect the loads to be and see what where it stresses. And you can do that with SimulationXpress and not have to be a full blown stress analyst to be able to do that. So that's something that a lot of people don't use that I think would be very helpful. Something I'm getting into more these days that I haven't used much in the past is the routing capabilities. If you're trying to route Okay, you're designing if you're designing a system and your revenue route pipes or wires from one point to another SolidWorks is very, very neat tools for doing that. If you haven't looked at routing, I'd highly recommend taking a look at some of those tools. And
Aaron Moncur:Is the is the routing in the standard license, or is that also just premium and professional?
Mark Downey:Premium and professional, yeah.
Aaron Moncur:Okay.
Mark Downey:So, of course, data management can't, you should always have a data management background. And when I started at Hunter Douglas, I was a one-man show, I was engineering for the shutter division. And I didn't implement a PDM system back then. Because probably, selfishly from my standpoint, I knew how to manage the files in SolidWorks. So I didn't have a problem with that. But as in not having the foresight to understand that as your company grows, and you add people, you need to have control over that data, you need people to visualize it. So we didn't implement PDM until late in the game there. And it's something that should have been should have been implemented from day one. So I think even one man shows when they come when you when you're starting out a company or start on a group or small group, if you're using SolidWorks, you should be using PDM to just to put a bit of a sales spin in, if it is something that should be used, it's great for managing your files, it's great for keeping control of them. And as you grow, it's a lot easier to have something in place from the start and and grow with it than it is to try to implement it when you got gigabytes of files that you have to try to control, so
Aaron Moncur:That makes sense.
Mark Downey:Um, so yeah. Lofting, surfacing. If you haven't, if you haven't used surfacing in SolidWorks, that's a great tool to use to surfacing has a lot of power to create geometry that you otherwise would fight a lot with making. Using sketches. I mean, you still use sketches to drive it. But a solid body has to be fully enclosed, has to be watertight, to be to be a solid, and surfaces don't have to do that. So you can create surfaces and cut and knit them together to sometimes create things that you wouldn't otherwise you'd struggle a lot to do with with regular sketches. So surfacing if it's not something you've explored, that's a good tool to use too.
Aaron Moncur:Let me ask you about your certifications, I mean, surfacing, you have a certification for that, you have pretty much every SolidWorks certification that exists, according to my research, yeah. To what extent do you think that studying for in passing these exams has has increased your capability as a mechanical design engineer, where you to go back into a design role?
Mark Downey:So, I've gotten all those certifications since I started with, back into this role in 2018. So since then, is where I've acquired all those certifications. I guess my path through industry has been somewhat steady and that I didn't move around a lot. I've had five, six positions over the over those 32 years. So, I didn't go out and seek certifications myself back then. But as I got as I got into a managerial role, and started looking for engineers and looking for that I was looking for those certifications. So it's, it's, I think it's important. If you're going into a role and you want to be there and be productive for a company. It's gonna it's going to be good for them to know that, 'Hey, I know how to use ours. I've got my CSWE or CSWA or CSWP. I know how to use SolidWorks, I know the tools, and it means a lot to see that having been through the certifications and seeing the testing that's involved.' If somebody comes to me and says,'I got my CSWP, I don't have to ask them if they know how to use SolidWorks.
Aaron Moncur:Got it.
Mark Downey:If they don't if they don't come to me with those, and I'm wondering now, how much do they really know about SolidWorks? Yeah, you use that, but do you really know how to use it? And so it's really good if you're wanting to if you're, if you're looking for a position where you're going to use SolidWorks? I think it's very important to have those certifications.
Aaron Moncur:And how much time should should the average mechanical designer expect to spend studying for and taking these certification exams? I mean, is each one just a few hours, or is it a few weeks of studying and preparing?
Mark Downey:Using the software is definitely important experience behind the behind the wheel, if you will, is going to be helpful. And so I would spend a couple of weeks or a month or two maybe just going through designing stuff. A lot of college students a lot of colleges are teaching solvers these days, and a lot of college students come out with their CSWA, which is their associates. It's not too far of a step to go from there to CSWP, there's three exams. So if you were going to do it, you'd want to study, go through the go through the tutorials that come with SolidWorks. There's also on the My SolidWorks. website, there's training available for if you've got a subscription to go in there and take the take some of the classes for the CSWP. So I would go through those if you're wanting to achieve those certifications to look for those exams.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, great. Great. Well, what are what are some of the biggest problems that you encounter at work?
Mark Downey:In this role?
Aaron Moncur:And if nothing comes to mind, specifically for this role, feel free to expand that question to your general career history.
Mark Downey:Let's see. Um, I guess in general time management, when I think about past positions, time management is, is always fun trying to make sure you schedule enough time to get the job done. Don't overcommit. It's, you always want to feel like you're being part of the team. But it is one of the hardest things learned to say is no, you when you're when you're working for a team, and they come up to us, Hey, can you go do this? Oh, yeah, I can do that. How can you do this? Oh, yeah, I can do that. And before? No, and before you know it, you're you're you've got 10 jobs on your plate when you really can only handle two or three. So learning how to say no, is probably one of the biggest challenges, I think
Aaron Moncur:That's great advice. I love that. Yeah.
Mark Downey:You don't have to be bad about...
Aaron Moncur:No, I agree for sure
Mark Downey:'No, I can't do that.' But you can certainly say, 'You know what, I'd love to help you out. But I've got so much stuff going on right now.' And I mean, they can they can understand. And management, I think a lot of times, will miss that if you've got somebody who's wanting to take things on and on and never say no, they'll they'll just keep piling things on. And and then you start missing deadlines. And you're like, Well, why did you miss that like? Well, because I've had so many things. Well, I should have said something early on. So if you're saying, hey, I've got this working on now, then it helps schedule things out. So I think learning how to understand what your workload is, and and understand what you can get done in a certain amount of time, which comes with experience is definitely a good, a good challenge.
Aaron Moncur:Great advice. Thank you for sharing that.
Mark Downey:Sure.
Aaron Moncur:Well, Mark, I should let you go. But thank you so much for spending this time. Before before we end. How can people get ahold of you?
Mark Downey:Through my work email, it's mdowney@goengineer.com. That's probably a good way to get ahold of me for any questions you may have. And I can respond via that way.
Aaron Moncur:And if we want to come stay at your farm in Missouri, how do we do that?
Mark Downey:Hit me up and we'll talk about it.
Aaron Moncur:Okay, fair enough. Well, Mark, thank you so much for spending some time with us today.
Mark Downey:My pleasure, Aaron. Have a great day, it's nice speaking with you.
Aaron Moncur:I'm Aaron Moncur, Founder of Pipeline Design and 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.