You Always Remember Your First

Before joining Fairfield Mfg., now part of Dana Corp., I had never designed anything or worked with off-angle gearing. I was a young engineer, curious, and ready to learn. And it didn’t take long before I successfully designed my first complete gearbox.

My ‘first’ was creating a new gearbox for Jacobs Wind Electric Co. in Minneapolis, Minnesota for one of its upcoming machines. Dating back to 1922, Jacobs was one of the earliest manufacturers of wind turbines.

Mentoring me through it all was my first boss and the one that I’d work for the next 29 years ― Jim Dammon, the longtime manager, and then vice-president of Fairfield’s custom gear and gearbox design engineering group.

Prior to my work at Fairfield, I was chief engineer at Schafer Gear Works, now Shafer Industries in South Bend, Indiana. There, I learned gear manufacturing: mostly parallel axis gearing, as Schafer did not make right angle gearing other than face gears and some fine pitch bevel gears.

The Jacobs design presented a few challenges. It was to have a shaft angle that was nine degrees off vertical, offset horizontally and was a speed increasing drive, rather than the much more common and more easily designed speed reducing drive. So, under Jim’s mentoring, I quickly learned all I could about Hypoid gearing, speed increasing gears, off-angle gearing, and shaft, bearing, seal and housing design.

Rick Miller’s custom-designed gearbox featured in a 1980’s print ad by Fairfield MFG & Jacobs Wind Electric Co.

The result is pictured here. Some of these gearboxes are still in use today. Both Fairfield and Jacobs ended up displaying this gearbox in several of their print advertisements. Since then, Fairfield has used several more gearboxes of my design in their print advertisements. 

When I first designed the Jacobs gearbox, I worked with M.L. Jacobs, the co-founder of the company and a legend and pioneer in the wind power industry. M.L. died a few years after I completed this project. Recently, I caught up with the co-founder’s son Paul, now president of the company his late dad co-founded. We reminisced about those days and how the wind energy business and Jacobs has changed over the years.

From those early days and since, the lessons I’ve learned are that you must start somewhere. Everyone does. It helps immensely to have a great mentor like I did in Jim Dammon. Working for a great company like Fairfield was beneficial as well. I appreciate the many opportunities I was provided there as a design engineer to grow and be creative.

Even though it was only a small machine; 10 KW and then 17 KW, I eventually designed gearboxes for wind turbines up to 300 KW.

My advice to my younger self: Don’t be overwhelmed when a task seems very difficult. Persevere and you can be successful, and it will be very satisfying. Believe in yourself and know that you can usually do more than you think you can.

That Jacobs gearbox was the start of what eventually became over 300 complete gearbox designs I created over a period of 36 years. Every project, including my three patented inventions, was interesting and rewarding. But I am proud of and will always remember my first.

My Road to Tesla

Key takeaways:

• Always help those just starting their career.

• It’s nice to be able to drive the results of your work.

• You never know where or when you will find another Purdue Boilermaker.

In 2014, I started a powertrain design engineering consulting department within Fairfield Mfg. (now part of Dana Corp.) with me as the only one working on this function out of the 1,100 employees.  My first customer was Tesla Motors through my connection with fellow Purdue grad Ryan Boris. I spent parts of four months in late 2014 and early 2015 working at Tesla, mostly on site at Tesla’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California.

My work there was on the development of the Model S front drive gears and transmission. It was an interesting, challenging and most enjoyable time, although everyone there works extremely hard and expects the same of you. It was truly a great way to finish my long career as chief engineer at Fairfield, as I left Fairfield a few months after completing my work at Tesla. I then started Innovative Drive Solutions, LLC.

The way this came about was interesting. Over many years, I have often helped and served as a mentor to mechanical engineering students at Purdue University, mostly on the Mini Baja or Formula V programs, or on their senior project. Around 2010, I met and helped a senior student at Purdue, Ryan Boris. Years later, I ran into Ryan at a technical conference. He told me that he worked at Tesla and asked me if I wanted to help them. I said that I did, and he asked me if I could be there the following week.

That was my initiation to the world of work at Tesla and the very quick pace of it. Ryan is now the Geartrain Engineering manager at Tesla.  But back then, he was my boss and client, a switch of roles.

I rarely get to personally experience the results of any of the projects and designs that I create. They usually are deeply embedded in another end product. I don’t own a hay baler, forklift, Victory motorcycle, or a piece of construction or mining equipment. But I do drive an automobile and a Tesla Model 3 is my main everyday car.

I get to experience the smoothness, silence, instantaneous response, and power of an electric car; and not just any electric car, but a Tesla — the best on the road. I now know what a significant car and car company it is. I had a wonderful opportunity when the company was younger to experience working there among some of the most intelligent and highly qualified people that I have ever worked with, especially Elon Musk. I cherish every minute of the time I got to spend there and consider myself fortunate.

I now realize every day how great a car it really is.

I take three lessons from my time at Tesla.

• Always help those at a different stage of their career and especially those still in college, not just because it is the right thing to do, but because you never know where they might end up and how you can help them further in the future, or if they can help you.

• It is very satisfying when you get an opportunity to directly experience an end product that you have worked on and had a hand in shaping.

• You never know where or when you will find another Purdue Boilermaker.

Education: The gift that keeps on giving

As my alma mater’s basketball team, the Purdue Boilermakers, prepares itself for what I hope will be a deep run in the 2018 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, I’m reminded of how my Purdue mechanical engineering education set in motion my profound thirst for knowledge.

Throughout my engineering career, I’ve never stopped learning. Whether it be a technical conference or webinar, researching and authoring a technical paper or taking a deep dive into a colleague’s publication, I am intentional in seeking out knowledge to better me personally and professionally. And you should too.

Purdue University president Mitch Daniels said, “Every successful enterprise has a very clear strategic purpose.” My personal strategy, one that has served me and my consulting business well, is to be curious and to never stop learning. 

Celebrating National Engineers Week

It’s National Engineers Week (Feb. 18-24) which gives me the chance to reflect on the opportunity I’m afforded to work with so many talented fellow engineers.

Photo by Gazette Review 2018

As vice chairman of AGMA’s vehicle gearing committee, it’s cool when great minds come together to talk shop while crafting industry standards.  And in my daily consulting work, I get to help my clients, leading-edge manufacturers in the United States and around the world, with gear and gearbox design and analysis. Finding innovative solutions for my clients never gets old. 

So, this week, and as I did last year, I applaud the talented professionals I’m lucky to work with ― engineers who contribute to society in so many ways.

Innovation for every generation

It’s National Engineers Week (Feb. 21-27) and there’s plenty to celebrate. Engineers have been making our world a better place since the beginning of time. 

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The first ‘engineer’ was God who, in the beginning, created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1) and then marveled at his design. And from that day forward, inventive minds have propelled us out of the Neanderthal era of living in caves to 4,000 B.C. China and when the first evidence of wheeled vehicles were used in rice farming.

Inventors like Nikola Tesla and Henry Ford challenged norms and changed the way we live. And today, iconic creative minds like Steve Jobs, Dean Kamen, Elon Musk and Burt Rutan continue to dream big and make it happen.

As always, engineers are solving society’s technical problems by applying scientific principles to advance civilization forward.  

For those of us who make our living as engineers in a career identified as a “hot job” and those who benefit from our inventions past, present and future, happy National Engineers Week.  

Finding space for Martian problem-solving

Recently, my wife and I watched The Martian, Ridley Scott’s movie starring A-list actor Matt Damon. In this thrilling science fiction drama, NASA astronaut Mark Watney, portrayed by Damon, found himself stranded on Mars, completely alone and with no way to signal Earth 140 million miles away that he’s alive. Against insurmountable odds and with dwindling supplies, Watney refuses to be the first man to die on Mars.  

To survive, Watney draws upon his ingenuity, his incredible resourcefulness, his engineering and botany skills, and a dogged determination. He solves seemingly unsolvable problems one after the other in a masterful display of intelligence, wit and engineering prowess.

In the science fiction novel The Martian by Andy Weir, the lead character Watney is portrayed as having earned master’s degrees in botany and mechanical engineering, yet the movie reveals Watney as having a Ph.D in botany with no mention of an engineering degree.

Whether it be the movie or the novel, with a botany degree and/or a mechanical engineering degree, it’s clear that Watney is one thing – a master at solving problems.

When failure brought the surety of death, Watney solved problems. And on Mars, alone and left to his own devices for his very existence, he engineered his way to survive and ultimately be rescued.

As an engineer, I solve mechanical problems for a living. Sometimes the solutions are simple and obvious, but often times they are as mind-bending as trying to find ways to live on Mars.

I’d like to think I could engineer my way home from an unsustainable planet called Mars, but that’s the folly of science fiction. For now, I’ll keep unleashing my creativity as if my life depended on it from the safety of the planet I call home – Earth. 

Rick Miller is president / sole owner of Innovative Drive Solution LLC, an engineering consulting firm specializing in gears and power transmission devices.

Hot job: Mechanical engineers keep things working

Recently the Indianapolis Star identified my career field as a "hot job" and asked me a few questions to help illustrate how mechanical engineers blend technical skills, science knowledge and creativity to improve and advance mechanics. 

For as long as I can remember, I knew I was going to be an engineer. For others, their talent, training and intellect opens many professional doors one of which might be engineering. To learn more about the career I love and the hot job others seek, click here.

Rick Miller is president / sole owner of Innovative Drive Solutions LLC, an Indianapolis-based engineering consulting firm specializing in gears and power transmission devices.