Tali Watkins spent a year with our Engineering Projects team. Now back at Loughborough University for the final year of a Robotics, Mechatronics and Control Engineering degree, Tali reflects on his time at Paragraf.
What did you work on?
Tali: Two main projects: the first was an automated wafer scriber. The team handed it to me on day one and asked me to find its issues. By the end, it was being used for several in-house projects. Having a tool which could scribe wafers in-house sped up the project workflow as there was no need to send wafers out to be scribed externally. The second was a pick-and-place robot that moves PCBs into slots. I had to code everything and design parts in CAD, so it used everything from my degree.
Who did you work with?
Tali: Software, data and mechanical engineers, plus research scientists who brought us problems to solve. I also helped Quality and Production with microscope imaging, so I got to branch out into every department.
What was it like seeing the Huntingdon foundry?
Tali: Surreal. Somersham is quite a small site, and then Huntingdon is gigantic. I joined while it was still being built and helped set up tools there. Seeing how much it’s grown is crazy.
What surprised you most?
Tali: The independence. They gave you a problem and time to come up with your own ideas. If you got stuck, someone was always there to help you look at it from another angle.
What’s your highlight?
Tali: The robot. In my first couple of weeks Gavin said, “Here’s the robot, see what you can learn.” By the end I was teaching others how it worked and watching it run in full. I even designed parts that were machined into a finished tool.
What would you tell someone thinking about a placement?
Tali: Do it. You get to put everything from your course into practice. At Paragraf, the work I did was actually used by the company, and not every intern gets that.
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