Meet our Engineering Intern, Mauricio Sanchez

This is our second year hosting an Engineering Intern, and while we’re sad to see another one leave, we’re grateful for the opportunity to impart some knowledge before he heads off to college. We also conducted a brief interview with him to reflect on his experience with us.

1.) Mauricio, Tell me a little bit about yourself. Where you are going to college and what hobbies do you have outside of interning here?

My name is Mauricio Sanchez and I am an incoming freshman studying Electrical Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology as part of their iSTEM Program. Throughout high school I participated in various competitions and clubs to gain experience in various engineering fields, such as being the Electronics Manager and Driver of FIRST Robotics Team 1257 where I led robot design and taught classes to underclassmen. About a year ago, a friend and I founded “Máquina Matadores,” a combat robotics team where we’ve built various robots of different sizes to compete across the east coast.

2.) What led you to this internship?

I attended a vocational high school and our senior year we are given the option to partake in an internship as an elective. I wanted to get real work experience and learn more about 3D/2D modeling, and that’s when I was led to United Fire Systems. I first worked in the shop in the summer where I got hands on experience with the products we were making, and from there I moved to more work involving AutoCAD and Creo Parametric Modeling.

3.)  Can you share some of the key projects or tasks you have worked on during your time here and what you have learned from them?

I was first tasked in assisting with R&D, running various trials on compressors and nitrogen generators for products that would later get sent for FM approval. From this, I would then create research documents to present our findings and discuss how we should move forward. For the past few months I’ve been working on updating the drawings and procedures for the STANDPIPE-PAC, making revisions to areas we were having issues with and modeling a new version of the STANDPIPE-PAC. I’ve also worked on programming a humidity sensor to further aid in the R&D process. Working in the shop for the summer taught me a lot about how procedures are followed and interpreted, and working both in both 2D and 3D space helped me gain more experience in programs that are essential for my future in engineering.

4. How do you see this internship helping you in achieving your future career objectives?

I’ve already seen how much this internship assisted in gaining Helena (a previous UFS intern from my high school) another internship during her first year at college. Getting your first internship is usually the hardest, especially in engineering, and working here has really helped me get a look into what engineering is like in the real world. I’ve already applied a lot of the modeling skills I’ve learned here to my combat robotics team, sending drawings across seas to have parts machined and creating several 3D models of robots that my friend and I later constructed.