Jake Upsher joined Natgraph’s Technical Department on a Design Internship for the summer after completing his second year at Nottingham University where he is studying mechanical engineering.
During his time at Natgraph, Jake spent time working in a variety of departments within the company including, customer process testing, design, CNC folding, welding, fitting dryers together and final tests.
Jake said about his experience, “I have learnt so much during my time at Natgraph. I have improved my CAD and Solidworks skills, project planning, costing exercises and the soft skills that come with working in office and workshop environments. Lots of the skills I have learnt are niche to sheet metal and I would never have found that out at Uni as they are specific skills to the industry. I think that side of things really will help me in the future.”
There were two projects specifically that Jake designed during his time at Natgraph. One of his projects was a heat exchanger support stand that greatly reduces fabrication time, this was put into production and can be seen on the right. The stand was made height adjustable so one design suits many Natgraph Dryer models.
Jake also designed mobile racking which will be used internally by our painting team to transport many painted components into our walk-in ovens for drying, improving productivity. This will be put into production next week.
Nick Salmon, Lead Mechanical Design Engineer, mentored Jake during his time at Natgraph and said “Jake quickly became a valuable team member contributing with work relating to production projects. Always keen to learn as much as he could he showed great interest in all aspects of the design and manufacturing process. It’s good to see such an enthusiastic approach to work from someone in the early stage of their career. I’d like to wish Jake all the best for his future.”
