Get to know Installation Technician, JD, and learn more about his involvement with 3D machine vision system installations and their applications.
What is different about your experiences and duties working at Liberty Reach compared to other companies you have worked for in the past?
“Liberty Reach is much more open to improvised and flexible solutions to customer issues. At larger companies I’ve worked for before, everyone and everything is tightly controlled and “by the book”. I was recently involved with a project at LR where the sensors were mounted on the rail with the robots. The space was too tight for us to mount the sensors to the floor. We “tricked” the software to act as stationary sensors do (since they’re stationary when we call the system to take a measurement). It’s an uncommon and elegant solution for most 3D vision systems.”
Describe one of the most unique work projects you have been involved with at Liberty Reach.
“I enjoyed the feasibility testing I worked on for a water jet cutting cell project. The parts were incredibly flexible, which makes getting the offset difficult. We had to produce different tests over the course of a few days and see which would yield better results and a way to track accuracy, as there’s not a lot of room for error. We came back to the office confident that we could do the work being asked, but had to come up with a way to prove it out….and we did! It was interesting to see a project from the very beginning, seeing if what we had envisioned would work and what the practical application of that idea resulted in. It reminded me of film and video projects I have done and how comparable it is between the work I do in preproduction and in production! In video work you do test shots before you properly film projects, to prove out your idea behind more complicated shots, especially if there’s a lot of different moving parts. It’s a similar concept that applies in my current role.”
What would you tell someone who is curious about the work you do or the learning opportunities?
“There’s been a lot of good learning opportunities to take advantage of, especially from the crew working here. I really enjoy the robot training sessions. Before working at Liberty Reach, I had never worked with a robot, nor had I ever expected to. But now I’ve had hands on experience with each of the robots in our labs. Fanuc is probably my favorite just because its what I’ve worked with the most, but each robot is similar enough that it’s easy to hop from one to another. This training has helped me to understand how to apply the vision systems on different robot types and the knowledge has come in very handy in the field for troubleshooting at client sites.”
What is your favorite holiday and do you have any traditions associated with it?
“Halloween is the best holiday. It’s a spooky holiday that celebrates scary things and the changing season and there’s a lot of fun to be had with that. We have had a drive-in movie night at my friends house since 2014 and it’s something I look forward to every year. My favorite memory was discovering that the art studio building we were projecting the movie on was occupied so suddenly in the middle of this horrifying scene somebody walks out of the building, sees seven cars with 12 people facing them in total silence. It was one of the most memorable Halloween drive-in nights we have had.”