NSF Grant #: 0653277

1. A Summer Internship at GA ESI NSF Grant #: 0653277 Azhar Yalda & Roberto Gomez San Diego State University Mentors: Frances McCord & Orang Ezazi in Quality Assurance Introduction As part of the SPSD Summer Team Internship, we were hired by General Atomics Electronic Systems Inc, a company specializing in control and information handling systems. GA ESI is a subdivision of the General Atomics corporation, a defense contractor based in San Diego, founded in 1955. Azhar Yalda is a junior electrical engineering major at San Diego State. She plans to obtain a masters and work in the engineering field. Azhar has worked in SDSU laboratories with students working on Xilinx, and she also has experience troubleshooting PC cards. At ESI, she helped in the development of electrical systems such as power supplies and capacitors. Roberto Gomez is a sophomore mechanical engineering major at San Diego State. This is his first internship and industry experience. He is seeking a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and also hopes to obtain a masters degree. At ESI, Roberto assisted in the production of systems involving aircraft and aircraft carriers. Job Details Hired as a tester and support personnel, Azhar provided clerical support to engineers. She helped with the assembly and testing of PCBs, following test procedures using oscilloscopes, multimeters, and power supplies. She also rebuilt and tested high voltage power supplies, maintained their safety, and logged relevant data. Working in the Quality Assurance department, Roberto helped insure the quality of parts and assemblies. He wrote, processed, and logged SDRs in order to document nonconforming material and design changes. He also assisted Inspection and Receiving by inspecting parts using calipers, radius/thread gauges, and orthographic drawings. Experience Even though we worked in different departments and on different projects, there are similar lessons we both have learned: How to apply theories, lessons, and methods learned in the classroom to the real world. Insight on how engineering industry works, and the relationship between design and manufacturing. Work with customer wants, needs, and expectations to insure good business relations. The importance of details in design, manufacturing, and quality control. The importance teamwork plays in the engineering field in order to achieve a common goal, and how critical communication is to keep a team together. Conclusion We are both grateful for having had the opportunity to participate in this team internship. We feel that this experience has been critical to our study of engineering, bringing together theory and reality. Through this internship we feel we have learned valuable lessons which will help us become successful engineers. Acknowledgements We would like to thank SPSD, Theresa Garcia, Angeline Villanueva, and the whole MEP team for giving us this opportunity. We also thank GA ESI for employing us, especially our friendly supervisors and coworkers, who gladly welcomed us as part of the GA team. www.linkwitzlab.com http://www.gaep.com/ CCS Series High Voltage Capacitor Charging Power Supply Printed Circuit Board (PCB) http://www.ga-esi.com/contact.html http://www.gaep.com/military.html