S2E22 Building Cars for the Transformers 4 Movie, and Immersing Oneself in Hands-on Work | Nick Bauer

Nick grew up building tube radios and cars – it’s no wonder he became an engineer. In high school be completely rebuilt a 2001 Dodge Dakota, before that he had an eBay store building tube radios.  Never the analytical-type engineer, Nick loves getting his hands dirty and is at his best when thrust into a chaotic environment where things need to happen quickly without the support of established systems or protocols. Follow Nick on his Instagram feed.

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.
 

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

Transcript

Presenter: 0:00

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.

Nick Bauer: 0:16

Internally engineers are yeah, we shouldn't make this stuff out this material. It's horrible. It's yeah, similar properties, the woods, it's never gonna work. And we put the first one together and he was super scared to sit in it. So one, one foot down, the seat sitting down, it's not cracking next thing you know, we're jumping it over jumps in beating the crap out of his.

Aaron Moncur: 0:51

Hello, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Being an Engineer Podcast. Today, we're speaking with Nick Bauer. And instead of listing off his credentials, and a brief summary of his background and experience, I thought I'd introduce Nick by reading a quick line from one of the recommendations left for him on LinkedIn. It reads, "This guy is brilliant. A lot of engineers go to school, do well graduate and might have learned something, Nick is not that guy. Nick loves this stuff." So with that, Nick, welcome to the show.

Nick Bauer: 1:23

So yeah, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Aaron Moncur: 1:27

Absolutely. Yeah. So first question, what made you decide to become an engineer?

Nick Bauer: 1:34

It's all started when I was a little kid, before I could talk I was stacking cans and doing other weird things like taking things apart, sometimes putting them back together successfully. And then I got into when I was 13 I got one of those prepaid credit cards. And then that was a different world back then. So I was able to sign up for PayPal and open the eBay account and I joined an antiqueradios.org forum and all these little guys on antiqueradios.org got me into antique tube radios and went to an antique store pick one up pick it apart fixed it before you know it I have hundreds of radios and a little eBay store Wow. As is pretty awesome send me free parts and mentor me and pass down the knowledge of tube radios. So that how I got started

Aaron Moncur: 2:34

Awesome. Did that did that little business fuel financially some of your later projects?

Nick Bauer: 2:41

Yeah, later projects and that was self-feeding for the tube radios. So whatever money I would make from the eBay store I just buy more so it got to the point where there was no storage in my parents house and what my room dropping soldering irons on the ground. It was bad.

Aaron Moncur: 3:00

That sounds awesome, though. I mean, for any budding engineer, what was it you liked so much about the the tube radios?

Nick Bauer: 3:07

Just because they're divided into sections? Everyone I got was at a different problem. So just troubleshooting and getting them going at the end and making a YouTube video or something like that is good times.

Aaron Moncur: 3:21

Nice. Was the sound quality a lot different than the the radios of the day?

Nick Bauer: 3:28

Well, some people, the audio files, they like the tube stuff sounds better because, the likes the the tubes, out of they call it a vowel sound or, feed into each other. So like audio files, still use McAfee to bass amplifiers and stuff because it sounds more rich. That's actually distortion.

Aaron Moncur: 3:54

Well, I guess to each his own. Were there any other projects grown up as a kid that that foreshadowed you're becoming an engineer?

Nick Bauer: 4:04

So yeah, I joined the robotics club in high school. That was fun. That dean came in first program. First Robotics was a was a big deal. So did that became president? It's really fun. The challenges and the I think it was a six week build time and mentoring other students and building the robot. That's a good time.

Aaron Moncur: 4:28

Nice. So did you always know that engineering that was what you were going to do? Or did you just know that you'd like building things but hadn't quite connected the dots between that and being an engineer?

Nick Bauer: 4:37

So yeah, I just like building things, but I always knew I want to be an engineer, but I was absolutely horrible at Math. I never thought it was going to happen.

Aaron Moncur: 4:46

Oh, interesting. So what what changed?

Nick Bauer: 4:48

So I basically put a TI-89 instead of a TI-84. It's Pre-calculus made easy on the calculator because it forces

Aaron Moncur: 4:59

Are you saying you're cheating?

Nick Bauer: 5:01

I mean, it looked like a TI-84 from the outside, step by step to frame the equation.

Aaron Moncur: 5:10

In my book that is that is what being an engineer is all about, right? It's solving problems. You saw a problem and you fixed it. You made the solution.

Nick Bauer: 5:19

Oh, yeah, I failed Calc 1 three times, but I ended up doing the rest of them. And diffie que no problem. Once I made the calculator

Aaron Moncur: 5:29

That is too funny. I love it.

Nick Bauer: 5:31

Oh yeah

Aaron Moncur: 5:32

Well, post graduation, you've had a long history working in the automotive field, and you're currently a special projects engineer at the Niccola Motor Company. Can you tell us a little about what you do as a special projects? engineer? I mean, what what is it about the nature of these projects that that makes them special?

Nick Bauer: 5:51

So basically, the vehicles we work on are the most advanced semi trucks in existence, because they have a bunch of different voltage variations on them, they're hydrogen as well as electric. So whenever there's a problem, let's say, we need to move the vehicle or hold the vehicle in the air, this or that. And there's no solution and place from the industry, some we can buy, or some that has a lead time, that takes a long time, I'll usually come up with a solution to the problem and implement it internally within the company.

Aaron Moncur: 6:29

And you seem you're a very hands on engineer. You're not the guy that just likes to sit behind a CAD box and design solutions. But you're the guy who likes to do that, and then implement them is that accurate?

Nick Bauer: 6:41

Yeah, it's very accurate. I would say I'm the farthest from analytical engineers, you can get pure on extreme practical engineering.

Aaron Moncur: 6:50

Yeah. So in your experience, you'd rather build something and just do it and see if it works, rather than putting together a bunch of equations and formulas and doing I don't know, some simulation. Is that is that right?

Nick Bauer: 7:05

Oh, yeah, that's that's great summary of it.

Aaron Moncur: 7:10

Nice. Nice. Nice. Can you can you talk about or share any of the maybe some of the like big success, big wins or big fails, conversely, that you've had over your career?

Nick Bauer: 7:24

Oh, yeah, I can talk about some of the earlier ones so Local Motors is my first startup company and big entry into the automotive scene. So we had this vehicle called the Rally Fighter was the world's first crowdsource car.

Aaron Moncur: 7:42

Oh, I'm glad you're talking about this, I wanted to get into the Rally Fighter.

Nick Bauer: 7:46

Oh yeah. Awesome vehicle. The first is supposed to be powered by a BMW M57 Diesel, but in production we couldn't get those engines because they're going to second division within BMW and supply it so we had to put LS3s in it. So it was pretty crazy because we had to adapt an LS32 vehicle that was already packaged around BMW motors. So here I am engineering intern going to school, making brackets and mounts and fuel pump modifications and everything else to help adapt this LS into this vehicle and hundreds of SolidWorks parts and drawings and we get to two generations the vehicle than the company wants to shift focus to 3d printed cars so we we actually made it Local Motors the first monocot 3d printed vehicle so all one piece Chassis Monica, printed and I was in charge of adapting basically taking apart Renault twizy ease and cutting using the vehicle try and train and these 3D printed cars and one was successful and one was not not sure what happened with the vehicles but we would build them on the trade show floor three days is pretty crazy. So sometimes you hack things together and they work and sometimes they don't

Aaron Moncur: 9:16

Now, what what do you mean by 3d printed car because most 3D printed materials I know most not all are great for touch and feel prototypes, but they're not super structurally sound. What what materials were you using that would hold up to the rigors required by the automotive industry?

Nick Bauer: 9:36

So we were internally engineers were yeah, we shouldn't make this stuff out this material. It's horrible. It's yeah, similar properties, the wood and it's never gonna work. And we put the first one together and he was super scared to sit in it. So one, one foot down, the seats sitting down, it's not cracking next thing you know, we're jumping it over jumps and beating the crap out of it. The material we use is really, really heavy. But it worked. And it's carbon, I mean, it's public knowledge. It's a carbon fiber ABS mix. And basically the ratio of carbon fiber, strands into the ABS mixture allows it to, when when the machine prints it, it's layers don't shrink and separate from each other. So there's a specific ratio between those two materials that make it work and not have crazy striations.

Aaron Moncur: 10:34

Is this a Markforge material?

Nick Bauer: 10:39

I don't know the meaning of that.

Aaron Moncur: 10:42

Markforged is a company that manufactures 3D printers that have a continuous carbon fiber inlaid and charged fiber.

Nick Bauer: 10:50

The I was chopped carbon fiber and little pellets, the lengths of the strands are not as large as the pellets of the material, but it was made by SABIC. Okay, interesting. I still believe they're using it in production, they have much better 3D printing technology now than it was five years ago for the Ollie vehicle.

Aaron Moncur: 11:09

Yeah, it's advanced pretty rapidly that you had mentioned the the the rally fighter was the the world's first crowdsource vehicle set mean that it was on Kickstarter or Indiegogo or something like that.

Nick Bauer: 11:22

Back in the day, Local Motors had their own forum as if you will. So, that's how they made their coin was selling their IP and their software to crowdsource things, which was their website and stuff. So everything was launched internally. Yeah. And that designer, we had many different competitions, whoever would when we get a prize, that would be 10,000, or 5000, or whatever. And then we we can go and try and make the vehicle, see if it'd be successful. But I think the Rally Fighter was Local Motors' most sold vehicle in terms of production of larger vehicles.

Aaron Moncur: 12:01

Oh, wow. And it's no longer sold, right?

Nick Bauer: 12:04

Yeah, we built , not sure under 100 of them, okay, two generations, the generations very differently based on the Chassis and, and suspension of the vehicle. And then there was one very unique vehicle in the beginning called beta, that I ended up purchasing as the only one that is powered by the BMW diesel engine.

Aaron Moncur: 12:29

And for everyone listening, I highly encourage you to go to Google and just type in Rally Fighter and check out the appearance of these cars because it's, it's like nothing I've seen before. It's like a cross between a sports car and a rally car. Nick, can you tell us a little bit about, where did the inspiration behind that vehicle come from? Because it's really unique and different and very cool.

Nick Bauer: 12:56

So it came from basically everyone does crowdsource have voted together by the internet and the designer that one his name was Seung Ho Kim and he was he was going to school at the time. He's an automobile designer. And basically the rally fighter to him was what the BMW i think X5 series should have been which was cross between a BMW X5 and a P51. Mustang, airplane so it has roof straps and a bubble canopy goes off for that desert 20 inches of travel. Because you you bought one of those right or you had one for some time. Oh yeah, I own one currently, I'll never get rid of it because it's such a special vehicle and a...

Aaron Moncur: 13:43

Nice.

Nick Bauer: 13:45

You can go play Grand Theft Auto, five and the coil roller. And then a few other video games have it when you're driving the vehicle. It's very much like the video game. It's unstoppable. Tons of power. Horrible brakes can go through anything and you can't see jacquin inside of it. It was stylized to look cool, but changing lanes is the scariest part of driving a Rally Fighter.

Aaron Moncur: 14:10

That's why you only take it on the district. Speaking of the desert you're here in Arizona so am I I'm pretty sure it I don't think it was in the rally fighter but maybe it was in one of your trucks. I saw some pictures that reminded me of a place that I'm familiar with. I think it was out of Sycamore Creek maybe the the Widowmaker area is that somewhere that you go?

Nick Bauer: 14:35

So yeah, back in the day when I was in college. go hang out with a lot of Se Bahagia guys and go to lower Sycamore and table Mesa and I live near Florence now so frequent that area some of the hardcore rock trails and stuff.

Aaron Moncur: 14:50

That's another place that people should check out is Sycamore Creek and the Widowmaker area over there. I mean it's a it's just a really cool rock. formation that Mother Nature has provided for us I've gone up there on my on my segway X260 dirt bike which I love and just barely made it up it's really steep hence

Nick Bauer: 15:13

Sycamore is awesome.

Aaron Moncur: 15:15

That's cool place well outside of work you've you've completed several very impressive projects on your own and I'm sure there are a ton of them but the two I read about were the the 2001 Dodge Dakota and the wonderfully named Millennial Falcon Dragon Wagon. Can you tell us a little bit about each of those projects?

Nick Bauer: 15:37

Oh yes a Dodge Dakota well as my first vehicle as a tool Chad Dodge Dakota and as is one of those presents for my parents and they said if I got four wheel drive but roll it over so that was my ambition to make this vehicle four wheel drive so going into college it was my daily driver and I collected parts and plan through forums pirate format for and stuff for three years when I was 20 I had a one month period where in between I think it was Christmas break I can implement it. So they're basically cut the vehicles for frame half design tire front suspension, putting in a Dana 44 front axle of a 1978 F250 the rear axle of a 1994 u haul van transfer case from 1970s Ford truck and put it on these King coilovers and built as low as possible to have as much suspension travel as possible and design my own steering system converting it from rack and pinion to crossover style steering have it all worked in the end that I ended up wheeling really hardcore trails and put 40 his tires on it and took it to King of the Mammers Project Canyon. It's been an awesome vehicle all before I was 20 so you completely overhauled this truck, the takota it's been through seven transmissions but it's on its original engine and still on the axles and using most of the design from when I was a teenager.

Aaron Moncur: 17:13

Incredible. So you're a teenager overhauling a truck? How did you know how to do all that? And how did you have access to the tools I mean, it sounds like you'd have to have a full auto body repair shop to do some of the things that you're talking about doing.

Nick Bauer: 17:30

So the knowledge was very important that's goes back to the antique radios days but back then we had the forums and the internet and that debt now the pirate format for everyone share their knowledge or good to like the best builds and type out really well written responses direct private message to the people I liked and ask him entry questions and they would come back at me and tell me how they would do things differently. So I take advice from the best of as far as implementing it, buying stuff off Craigslist or going to junkyards I'd really didn't have anywhere to build it I was living with some roommates in college house in South Phoenix and I made this crazy adapter that I would plug into the oven and bring 50 amps outside the sand a nice 220 volt welder and when well when it wouldn't when it wasn't one day off before really nice well filled cardboard cutouts whatever I had to do I did

Aaron Moncur: 18:33

Finding a way, right?

Nick Bauer: 18:35

Yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 18:36

Nice and and how about the Dragon Wagon? What can you tell us about that one?

Nick Bauer: 18:42

That was my exodus to Local Motors. So Local Motors is a great company. But it was it was my time to go and I want to build a vehicle in the parking lot and the CEO was always awesome he enjoyed my creations and and shared them but as we became more corporate HR didn't really the parking lot. I show up with Frankenstein together with the half done heavy cat swap I finished it up and then built this crazy subframe for a camper and basically put in my two weeks so I'm madly building this creation to 26,000 pounds six wheel drive Cummins Allison powered house on wheels. I left the company looking for brighter futures and the San Francisco Bay area but around Palm Springs apart. I did every touch just completely exploded the 1300 pound transfer case melted its input bearings. So that led to another adventure. We're ended up getting another job and stuff.

Aaron Moncur: 19:56

And you got another job just because you're basically your home broke down and you needed to earn some money to keep going.

Nick Bauer: 20:03

So yeah, I was working a big LA and San Francisco Bay was so expensive and I was homeless and my truck was broken down and around LA and Redlands, California. So I'm, it was my first corporate job and I hated it. So I started putting out job offers hitting up everyone with a startup and that's when I contacted Giovanni and Dakota at it was at a time Thor Trucks, now XLS trucks. They were younger than me at the time. And they started this startup truck company and they they basically Frankenstein this truck together. And I knew trucks so they hired me as a six employee as the lead manufacturing have shopped engineer and I fixed the truck and I drove it and lived in the parking lot excise trucks and help fill the one of the first electric semi trucks. So that was I guess they didn't have an HR department there yet. No, no, no HR department. Yeah, LA is pretty crazy, man. It's especially North Hollywood, LA County HR department would survive.

Aaron Moncur: 21:06

Tell me more about that. What's crazy about it?

Nick Bauer: 21:09

Just LA is completely different, with Phoenix in terms of the culture, negotiation with suppliers, dealing with the state for installing machines is huge culture shock for me, Oh, no, it is more informal and so haggling from Arizona, and it was complete shock to me, a lot of people in California go really hard with everything in North Hollywood. It's where I was staying was a sketchy area and you hear gunshots at night, Dakota Dakota said, I could park my truck at his 1000 acre ranch in Malibu and has Petraeus my neighbor. Or I could park it at the shop in North Hollywood and live in the parking lot. And I was, yeah, I'm gonna park at the shop because I hate LA traffic.

Aaron Moncur: 22:04

Yeah, that's a big deal. Right? They're not having to sit through an hour to traffic every day. Oh, yeah. Well, let me take a real quick break here and share with the listeners that teampipeline.us is where you can learn more about how we help medical device and other product engineering or manufacturing teams develop turnkey equipment, custom fixtures and automated machines to characterize inspect, assemble manufacturer and perform verification testing on your devices. We're speaking with Nick Bauer today. I know Nick is I was preparing for this webinar. I kept wanting to say Jack Bauer, do you ever get that guy?

Nick Bauer: 22:41

Yeah, a lot of people have not watched 24 yet, but it's definitely one of these days when I have some free time. I'll give them the series because everyone references the Jack Bauer and I have no clue what he's talking about. It must be a badass guy, beca use it's a total endearment.

Aaron Moncur: 22:55

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. There are definitely some similarities. But I think you'd have to say you're probably more of a MacGyver than a Jack Bauer, right?

Nick Bauer: 23:05

Yeah, for sure.

Aaron Moncur: 23:06

It's a huge compliment, of course, because the guy over rocks. When you worked at at Thor Trucks, which is now XLS Trucks you were you were working long hours, 80 hour weeks. And given all the personal projects that you've completed, which I assume, take quite a bit of time as well. I'm guessing that you must have a lot of energy to get all this stuff done. Have have you just gotten lucky with good genes or has developing that level of high energy been something that you've intentionally were done over the years?

Nick Bauer: 23:39

Oh. Yeah, just like that. It's when he lands I can go multiple days without sleeping. Although I did one one week and ended up I ended up going to the hospital, but you didn't sleep for a whole week. All right, yeah, I didn't sleep for a whole week. It's hard to turn my brain off. That's really the biggest challenge I have with living is sleeping I just want to get to sleep sometimes. But a lot of other people are like this, your mind just goes crazy like three o'clock and gone Wikipedia deep dive into some mechanism or some weird vehicle or something. It just never stops. And a lot of these startup companies can exploit that in a good way.

Aaron Moncur: 24:25

What what was it like that sleeping for a week? I can't I'm a wimp when it comes to sleep because my eight hours are no good the next day and I can't even fathom going for multiple days, let alone a week.

Nick Bauer: 24:40

Yeah, is pretty bad. Around three days in two days I usually do startup at work because then you start getting weird and accidents can happen. We've had one head on collision at Local Motors because of that. So institute policy can't work long hours, but after three or four days, my body just wasn't wanting to fall asleep i'd close my eyes and then suddenly jump up to I have a fever and to be quite honest, I entered a temporary state that was weird and had to go to the hospital knocked me out of that. A lot of lost memory from it happened.

Aaron Moncur: 25:22

Oh, that is insane. Holy cow. That must have been, was it scary at the time? Or did you just not even realize that this was happening because you were so sleep deprived?

Nick Bauer: 25:33

I felt like I was in a dream so it wasn't scary. I was like, this is a crazy dream man, to the hospital. Right everything. My significant other my my mom didn't think I was gonna snap out of it. Crazy forever. But yeah, it's yeah, it's good to get sleep. Take it sleep. It's important.

Aaron Moncur: 26:00

So leading up to that, did you did you not want to sleep or you just you for whatever reason you couldn't you said you couldn't turn your brain off.

Nick Bauer: 26:08

Oh, yeah, I can't turn my brain off. Normally I have to take sleeping pills or have a separate sleeping area. Don't go my phone lock the phone away. Lock the computer away. Yeah, I was at the start of the Coronavirus thing. I think I had a lot of anxiety and I just couldn't sleep.

Aaron Moncur: 26:26

Yeah, yeah. Well, what is that was researching you and looking at your background. I mean, I started getting this, this mental image of you as a person and it was really clear that that you have all this energy right? You can do so much. And I thought to myself, this guy is gonna be hyperactive when we start talking now he's gonna be bouncing here and there and everywhere. And you're totally not you're super chill and very very relaxed. So I'm I'm surprised a little bit by your your demeanor, not in a good way or a bad way. Just not exactly what I expected. Do you ever get that from people?

Nick Bauer: 27:06

Oh, yeah, I get that sometimes. I'm gonna have your head in that say this publicly. But you have a disability. I've done for a long time about it. I was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder primarily and attentive in grade school. And they put they put kids on medication, but just wasn't thing for me. Yeah, the sitting problem even worse, when they put you on fetta means but through this entire journey, I've learned a lot of coping mechanisms with it, calculated another calculator, being quiet. It's my mind constantly trying to get over this add, I have a lifetime of coping mechanisms to deal with. And it's getting better with time.

Aaron Moncur: 27:48

If you don't want to share any of these, I totally understand that, my son is the same way. He his brain just goes 100 miles a minute. And we've, we're always trying to help him in different ways. Would you be open to sharing any of the coping mechanisms that you found to be effective?

Nick Bauer: 28:05

Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think it's important for people with learning disabilities on the autistic spectrum or attention deficit disorder to to share these coping coping mechanisms so I can help other people.

Aaron Moncur: 28:19

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, clearly you love cars, and you've owned, I think, 29 of them, and maybe that number is even higher now. Have you had any favorites? Or have they all been special in their own unique ways?

Nick Bauer: 28:37

I have a few favorites. The Rally Fighter's my favorite right now. Just because I have such history with that car.

Aaron Moncur: 28:45

I'm not surprised to hear that. That's such a cool car.

Nick Bauer: 28:48

Oh, yeah. And it's pretty crazy, because I've been at three startups two IPOs. And they're really horrible at negotiation. So not financially free at all. But but Jay Rogers at Local Motors, man, I don't really care about money, but that Rally Fighter is one of the kind, what he did for me, allowing me to recently purchase that vehicle is just pretty crazy.

Aaron Moncur: 29:17

So that's fantastic.

Nick Bauer: 29:19

Oh, yeah, that vehicle locomotor is here to always sit and when I would leave and break, it's a 2009 BMW 335 D drive train shoved into, this Rally Fighter says, 20 different check engine lights on and it's just always a challenge to keep it going. But I love

Aaron Moncur: 29:41

Your spirit animal. Oh, yeah. What do you think it is about automotive that that makes you love the work so much?

Nick Bauer: 29:50

It's extremely hands on. It's cool. It's got the cool factor. I mean, sometimes I hate it. Maybe I want to get out of automotive, get into another field of engineering. But it's really cool when when you build a vehicle that changes history or turns on for the first time and you and maybe a couple other engineers are there to experience it and see it do weird things no one has talked about, or he accidentally put it, an RPM value for the wheel speed, and it's for the motor and, and spins up and goes 300 miles an hour in there, and you're, Whoa, that's also, those little experiences when no one of these prototype vehicles comes alive, or turns on after weeks and weeks of troubleshooting that make it all worth it.

Aaron Moncur: 30:43

And gets showcased in a feature length film. We didn't talk about that. But the rally fighter was in the Transformers 4 movie, I think

Nick Bauer: 30:53

Oh, yeah, yeah, it was pretty cool. I get to go get shipped out to help that car on the set, because they accidentally ran into another car. And they said, Oh, it's just gonna be upgrade, replace. And I was like, oh, they'll send the intern out. It'll be easy. For the, the wheel hit this other vehicle and punch the control arm into the frame. And it was undriveable and unsafe, and they're like, we have to have the done filming by tomorrow. And it was a Sunday Austin, Texas. We have no welders that were working. I'm calling people on Craigslist, like cutting metal off with these people that work in movie industry. They're all union workers, but they're awesome to work with. And they're like, more carnies than anything just going heads on into this rally fighter fiberglassing the body together had this guy and his son come in from Craigslist, things like zap Bumblebee. And I'm like, Yeah, sure. Here sign this NDA, awesome experience.

Aaron Moncur: 31:55

Oh, that's dope cool. Sounds like everyone really pulled together and just got it done.

Nick Bauer: 32:00

Oh, yeah. Stuff like that. This is pretty cool.

Aaron Moncur: 32:04

Yeah, that's an experience that I mean, no amount of money can buy right?

Nick Bauer: 32:08

there. Yeah, yeah. Working for paramount. Transformers was was pretty awesome. For sure.

Aaron Moncur: 32:16

What's, what's the best way to get on your bad side and also the best way to get on your good side?

Nick Bauer: 32:22

Oh, Jesus, the hard one. Good side. The best ways, I don't know, I like people that have projects. Everyone I work with that has a project at home. I get along really well with them. Okay. They're very, driven literally. So bad side I really I don't like career driven engineers or people I work with that aren't in for the passion. I guess you could say like, I don't know I don't I have to start respecting them later.

Aaron Moncur: 33:01

If you're punching out of 5pm that's that's not your bag.

Nick Bauer: 33:05

The 10s, I mean, some people can get things done really fast and if they're getting back if they show up for an hour and do the work at 20 people awesome to work with I like working with people like that.

Aaron Moncur: 33:19

Yeah 8 players typically working with other 8 players. Well, you have this this nickname Slick Nick, can you tell me where the nickname came from?

Nick Bauer: 33:28

Man in Local Motors we have these these guys OG guys that were relocated with a company. They're from Boston. We have this one guy named Mike Pazhani. And he just called me Slick all the time.

Aaron Moncur: 33:39

Okay,

Nick Bauer: 33:40

I that makes things I don't really really know why they call me Slick. But my whole Instagram is Slickness Industries. It's everything.

Aaron Moncur: 33:48

It just stuck huh?

Nick Bauer: 33:49

Yeah, it's my hair back and...

Aaron Moncur: 33:51

Nice.

Nick Bauer: 33:52

Maybe sometimes they do slick things.

Aaron Moncur: 33:55

Good branding.

Nick Bauer: 33:56

Oh yeah

Aaron Moncur: 33:58

So you're clearly a guy who can get a lot of stuff done. Do you have any specific strategies or tools that you can share about how to get the most out of yourself? How to be super productive?

Nick Bauer: 34:11

So yeah, that's something I always have problem with is like staying productive through the work day.

Aaron Moncur: 34:17

Oh, really?

Nick Bauer: 34:18

Yeah. If you if you're me, the best way for me to be productive is just thrown into, when stuffs on fire, things are lame, and things are, all corporate and boring. I don't really know how to deal with that. But there's a vehicle with a major problem and no one knows how to fix it. Throw people like me just at it with the with some way to purchase things money.

Aaron Moncur: 34:49

Money and Nick, that's a problem.

Nick Bauer: 34:51

Yeah.

Aaron Moncur: 34:52

That's awesome. What are what are one or two of the biggest challenges that you have at work?

Nick Bauer: 35:00

Yeah, definitely staying not on task but staying focused, when things are are more corporate, that's that's probably the biggest challenge and some I still haven't figured it out yet.

Aaron Moncur: 35:18

Yeah, yeah, those little startups

Nick Bauer: 35:20

Where you're getting paid potatoes and Is it a real challenges? I love that. That's that's what's really fun.

Aaron Moncur: 35:27

You like the really fast paced environments where there's there's always a fire to put out

Nick Bauer: 35:31

Yeah, when there's always a fire to put out. And when there's no organization. I'm looking for that Valve Software. I'm looking for that. The, of the engineering world. I'm not sure if that company exists yet. Yeah. You love the chaos. It sounds like, Oh, yeah, we're everyone's on the same playing field and just work together to make a common goal. build some really cool.

Aaron Moncur: 35:59

Awesome, I love it. Well, how can people get ahold of you, Nick?

Nick Bauer: 36:05

Oh, yeah, you can hit me up on Instagram. That's where I'm most active. It's a Slickness Industries. I have my email, nick486dx@gmail.com. And social media, Facebook, getting on that TikTok. Just seems pretty fun stuff.

Aaron Moncur: 36:27

Excellent. Excellent. All right. Well, is there anything else that we should have talked about anything else you think would be interesting or informative to people that we haven't talked about?

Nick Bauer: 36:37

I just I know, there's other engineers out there me, especially for people that have yet to be, engineers going going in school. They have learning disability, ADD, and failing classes. But no, that's what they want to do in life. My advice is, do whatever you can, don't give up, because people, I can solve problems out there. You'll go far in your career, keep going drop, if you got dropped out and go to community college to get your classes done. Because more one on one, do it, never give up. It's, it's okay, if you don't have to graduate in four or five years, take your time and get through it.

Aaron Moncur: 37:20

I think that's such excellent advice. I personally struggled a little bit through college, I mean, I did fine. I got mostly A's and B's, but it was hard. I'm not a natural academic, for sure. I just put a lot of hours into to get those A's and B's. And I remember, a guy that I knew growing up was an engineer. And he told me, engineering, school is hard. And you might feel tempted to give up at a certain point. But once you get out of school, and start working, things are different, that's what once you start doing the actual work, it's it's easier in a sense than the schooling. And I remembered that when I was in school, and then there were times when I wanted to give up and I thought, yeah, this is too hard for me. I'm not sure I can do it. But like you said, Just push through it. And that turned out to be true. Once I got through a school, the actual work of engineering was so much more fulfilling for me than just getting through the school.

Nick Bauer: 38:24

Yeah, it's way more fulfilling, and instead of paying for it, you get paid to do it. So that's a bonus as well.

Aaron Moncur: 38:32

Fantastic. All right. Well, Nick, thank you so much for hanging out a little bit today. It was super fun getting to know you and hearing some of your stories.

Nick Bauer: 38:40

Right. It was nice talking to you. I appreciate you having me on the show today.

Aaron Moncur: 38:47

I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of Pipeline Design & Engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please share the episode. To learn how your team can leverage our team's expertise developing turnkey equipment, custom fixtures and automated machines and with product design, visit us at teampipeline.us. Thanks for listening