Meet VMH International’s Dream Team of Student Engineers

Meet Taylor Jay, Steven Ver Halen, Michelle Erbs, Deck Slone and Tony Bindbeutel. Together they are the “Dream Team” at VMH International, one of our platinum channel partners. This is the second summer that VMH has hired student engineers to provide their customers with a Dream Team to tackle new ideas and challenges.

VMH customers submit any idea or problem to the Dream Team. Then the team uses the industry’s latest technology like Siemens PLM software on those real-world engineering projects.

Let’s meet the team.



 

Meet Tony Bindbeutel

Tony has always liked cars. So his dream assignment this summer was to redesign a 1927 Ford Model T

“We wanted to see if we could make it look like a Lamborghini .”

Tony used NX and synchronous technology to import a 3D scanned image. Then he looked for ways to make it more Lamborghini-ish as well as fuel efficient. The Dream Team even had an internal CFD contest to see who could design the best friction flow.

Tony will be a senior in mechanical engineering at the University of Missouri.

 

 

Meet Michelle Erbs



Michelle is the resident Teamcenter expert on the Dream Team. She has guided the team in using Teamcenter on the cloud for collaboration on several key projects. She says her dream job would be at Boeing. We discussed women in engineering and she notes

“you get a better employee if you hire a girl engineer ;-).”

She noted there are about 12 women in her aero engineering class of 150, but a higher percent in biomedical engineering. She noted one of the highlights of her summer work was attending Solid Edge University. There she helped teach a Teamcenter collaboration course. She will be a senior at Purdue University studying aeronautical and astronautical engineering.

Meet Steven Ver Halen



It was pretty clear Steven was headed to electrical engineering from a young age.

“I always like drawing schematics as a kid.”

One of his summer projects was to rewire a 1927 Ford Model T using 3D wiring in NX. Steven said it was interesting to rewire the car considering it did not have the electronics package on vehicles today.

He also worked on mapping an SAP to Teamcenter migration for a customer.

Steven will be a junior in electrical engineering at Purdue University this fall.

 



Meet Deck Slone

Deck was first exposed to CAD programs in seventh grade.

He enjoyed learning new programs this summer. He came up to speed quickly in NX, designing a complete flashlight after a week of training.

Deck is a sophomore studying mechanical engineering at Washington University in St. Louis.

 



Meet Taylor Jay

Taylor was the youngest student engineer of the team. He’s getting an early start to internships since he’s a nephew to VMH CEO Vern Heyer.

He will just be a freshman in industrial design this fall at University of Kansas.

One of his summer projects was to research and develop a 3D locator app for a Raytheon submarine system. The idea was a “you are here” app so anyone can see where they’re at on large ships. The customer – the ship’s captain – was very impressed and the company is developing the application further. Taylor noted:

“There really is no limit to your creativity with these software tools.”

 

The Dream Team is managed by a former Dream Teamer, Tim Banks. He is a mechanical and aerospace engineering graduate from the University of Missouri.

“It’s good to see a diverse group of people come together on these projects. This really is the kind of team you’d like to have year round. These students will be leaps and bounds ahead from the real-world projects they now have experience with.”

Another Dream Team project this summer was designing a set of golf clubs in NX. They used X-form, I-form, Boolean subtractions and raster imaging in NX. Then they rendered images in KeyShot. They managed the project in Teamcenter. In addition to designing the clubs, members of the team presented the final designs to the customer, Cobra Golf. That’s one of the unique aspects of the Dream Team. These student engineers will have experience presenting ideas and designs to clients in addition to their actual project work. Many students don’t experience that until after graduation in their first job.

Some of the Dream Team had used Siemens software before and some are new users, training themselves through online courses in our Learning Advantage.

Several Dream Team members had already returned to school before my visit. So we’d also like to recognize Conner Wolk, Cameron Tighe, Carson Heyer and Kylie Heyer.

This week most of the Dream Team is in Detroit unveil their “Modernizing a Classic” project – that redesign of a 1927 Ford Model T. To learn more about what these student engineers did this summer, check out the Dream Team blog and Twitter feeds.

What would you like to see the Dream Team design or redesign?

– Dora