Joe joined MDS for his work experience in February 2019, he spends 1 day a week with us where he has been able to go on site visits and shadows MDS engineers. Joe is in his first year of an Electrical and Electronic Engineering course at College, therefore, being able to do his work experience with MDS will give him hands on experience that will be valuable for his course.
During his time with us so far Joe has had and an introduction to MDS and all the staff, as well as an introduction to the basic principles of metal detection. He has also had the chance to visit some customers with our Technical Sales Director where he can see the machines onsite and how we offer solutions to customers.
For his first visit Joe shadowed Pete, our Technical Director, to a food manufacturer who make pastry. This company had an older machine which was no longer reliable, they were looking into replacing that and introducing a new system on to an existing line. Interference had been a problem in the past so a bespoke solution was suggested. Joe was able to be involved in the discussions which showed him why this was the better solution for their product.
Joe has also been to see a furniture manufacturer where they were having a problem with the detection of needles in cushions because of the zips. The zips were made out of a non-ferrous material so the best solution is an MN21, because this can be set up to ignore non- ferrous.
Joe has also spent a day in the MDS training room where he was able to learn how to do a product set up and fail- safe test on the systems we keep on site. He was able to put some of our standard product examples through the metal detector to see how each one effects the metal detector and how to set up the metal detector correctly to detect contaminants.
“I have really enjoyed going on site where I can see the different stages of the processes and options available when providing a solution. This has also allowed me to understand which solution is more suitable for each project. Being able put the theory of the basic principles I learned into real life situations is really interesting for me.”
Having already covered magnetism on his course Joe is able to establish a link between this and the basic principles of the metal detectors.
Now Joe has turned 18 he is allowed on factory floors, so he will be heading out with our service engineers to help them do site validations. This is a key part of keeping a metal detector healthy, so will be a great place for Joe to learn about different brands of metal detector, and the Codes of Practise required by Supermarkets.
Joe has really thrown himself into his work experience with us and we can’t wait to see how he gets on over the next few months with us.