Electrical engineering senior Eli Richardson from Traverse City, Michigan takes us inside RM Young Company. Read on to learn how this Michigan Tech student’s passion for electronics fuels both his corporate role and a massive high-power motor project in his garage.
What are you doing this summer?
I’m working at RM Young, based in Traverse City. It’s a company that makes a majority of the weather sensors used all around the world. Most of the components are made entirely in house. My specific role is R&D intern, which is all about updating our old sensors. That includes through-hole components to SMD, designing and programming retrofit boards for older model sensors, and fixing broken PCBs. My primary project is the 05103 wind monitor. I’ve been updating it to use a newer protocol.
What are some of the challenges?
When I first started, I had no idea what I was doing. I had to learn all these different CAD packages, along with niche programming software. At the same time, my boss wasn’t used to talking with people who didn’t know what was going on, so he’d use a bunch of niche terminology. I’d need to Google what it meant after each conversation—and then hope I was responding to him correctly!
What do you enjoy most?
It’s the freedom I get from having an engineering job that allows me to take a project in whatever direction I think would be best (or sometimes most fun). And at the same time, nobody asks any questions if I get up from my desk and walk around for no real reason. A consistent schedule is really nice, too.
How did you get interested in electronics?
I’ve been interested in electronics for as long as I can remember. I was always intrigued by things that plugged in. I slowly learned more and more about how to plug things in correctly, so to speak, up to the point that I jumped into the deep end of a job here at RM Young where I was expected to know quite a lot. But I had no clue how much I didn’t know.
What are your career goals?
After graduating, I very much hope to continue working at RM Young (if they’ll have me) and see where life takes me from there.
What do you like to do for fun?
For the past 6 months I’ve been trying my best to make a high-power axial flux motor. It takes up a grand majority of my free time. I only have a small portion completed, if I can even call it that.
What’s an axial flux motor?
Axial flux motors have mostly been used in generators. Recently, though, the high-performance car maker, Koenigsegg, which is owned by Mercedes, made their “dark matter” motor based on axial flux topology. After seeing a video of its construction, I wanted to try making one, myself.
Tell us more
The controller needs to be tuned for the motor to work correctly, and ideally, it is a pure sine wave controller that uses field-oriented control. I will be making a controller with the Open Source Enterprise at Michigan Tech next semester that can hopefully drive the motor. Once it’s all done, I honestly still have no idea what I’ll be able to do with it.
My design is going to be incredibly heavy and powerful, but the only manufacturing tool I have is a 3D printer. It should work, but I have no idea for how long. I’ll probably buy some kind of CNC machine to make a version 3 that isn’t just made of mostly plastic. At that point I should probably learn some simulation tools to make sure everything is designed in an ideal manner.
If you could create any company or invention what would it be?
I would make axial flux motors and subsequent controllers to go with them. I’m way too fascinated with them!
