Student Spotlight: Benjamin Larsen

BENJAMIN LARSEN STUDENT SPOTLIGHT MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Senior Mechanical Engineering student Benjamin Larsen developed a long list of skills and interests thanks to a childhood spent tinkering in his family’s garage and the woods near his house. His curiosity was fueled further by a family with an entrepreneurial spirit and a curiosity about how the world works. As a homeschooler, Larson took PSEO classes (Postsecondary Enrollment Options) and planned to take a year off after graduating from high school. But after Dunwoody came up in conversations he decided to check it out and visit campus. “I wasn’t sure what to expect from a private technical school,” Larsen said. “Very quickly I noticed the small classes, and the fact that a lot of people have jobs and families. There’s a diverse range of ages and backgrounds.” Larsen enrolled in the Engineering Drafting & Design (MDES) program and switched to Mechanical Engineering when that degree became available the fall of 2016. “I knew right away that I wanted to do more than what MDES was offering,” Larsen said. “I wanted to get into data analysis, but also maintain the design and hands-on stuff that MDES offered.” His time at Dunwoody has also changed his perspective on what success looks like. “Work ethic is now a lot more important to me than intellect,” he said.

ENGINEERING & DATA One of the projects Larsen enjoyed the most was for his Geometric Dimension & Tolerancing & Measurements class. “We had to come up with a device that would record data and perform uncertainty analysis. And it had to be as automated as possible,” Larsen said. He and a classmate built a Computer Measuring Machine. They designed and 3D printed the components to make the measuring device itself. An Arduino microcontroller captured the measurements and fed them to a Raspberry Pi computer, which pushed the data up to a network. After making sure the data flowed and converted correctly, Larsen then pulled it down to his laptop and used a Python application to plot the data points. The end result was a device, or rather a system of connected devices, that probed several points on a surface and then graphed the points to see how flat the surface being measured was. They used a surface plate in the College’s Metrology Lab as a comparison and generated heat maps for other surfaces — tables, carpet, pieces of plywood — to show their variability.

REAL-WORLD EXPERIENCE The College’s project-centered curriculum works well for Larsen. And he’s already using his skills beyond Dunwoody’s walls. Going into his senior year, Larsen has completed internships with Design Ready Controls, and Graco. He has also done contract design work using the SolidWorks skills he learned in his year as an MDES student and currently has a contract programming magnetic fields for different mechanisms. This is in addition to continuing an internship at Boston Scientific where he started out as a tech intern for the batteries manufacturing department. Larsen has now moved into engineering and is doing design work and prototyping. One of his current projects is to redesign a welder. To speed the project up, Larsen took CNC training with Productivity Inc. so he can machine the parts himself.

WHAT’S NEXT After graduating this May — as part of the inaugural Mechanical Engineering class — Larsen hopes to land a full-time position with either Boston Scientific or the company he’s doing the magnetic field programming for. He’s also considering working part-time with his brother on a start-up company that focuses on improving automation technology for food production. “I want to get really good at automating food production so I can use that to produce food in space, whether that’s on satellites or planets,” he said. “Space companies are popping up and in the next five to 10 years food production in space is going to become more important. The technology is there — it just needs to be developed and tested.” The first class of Dunwoody’s Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering program will graduate in May 2020.