This summer I've been interning at the wonderful Hadrian Automation as a robotics intern. I learned about the company initially through seeing a youtube video on tech startups. After realizing they were in the Los Angeles, I put them on the list of companies that I'd be interested in interning at. As it was nearing the end of the school year, I finally got in touch with them and started to talk with them about an internship position. Rick Shanor was immensly helpful in the process and eventually gave me a take home assignment. It was a neat project to program a robot in with RoboDK's Python API. I haven't programmed arm robots before and had some interesting problems with the robot colliding with other feaures in the scene. I submitted my work and got some questions about what I could improve on. Some back and forth later, I was offered a position in their Los Angeles Factory 2 as a robotics intern.
What do I do there?
Rick has been very attentive to the interests that I have and assigned me to a project that involved many of my interests and skills together. I am creating a proof of concept for a automation cell to assemble and disassemble cnc tools! It may not sound exciting at first but after working on this project for a month at this point and another month to go, I am very excited about it. I have learned alot about 3d printing, cnc, robot programming, programming a python monorepo, removing my code from a python monorepo, and the details of building tools for cnc machines. I have access to all of the tools that I could possibly need to make this project happen and the only real limiting factor is how fast I can use them and interate on my desins. I am also just a message and few meters away from industry experts in computer programming, robotics, and engineering anytime that I need help with a problem. The team at hadrian has gotten me out of alot of trouble by coming over to my desk, talking to me for a few minutes and dropping a wisdom bomb that changes my entire outlook on the project and just how much I have to learn.
What's it like at a startup?
Hadrian is a few years old now. In the Aerospace Manufacturing industry though, they are babies. They currently have one factory / headquarters that houses all of the employees. Many of them work on the factory floor to be closer to their area of work, or because there's not enough space in the office portion of the building. The warehouse itself is a wonderful, temperature controlled, well-lit, maze of cnc machines and robots that whir around 24/7. While everyone is in close quearters, they hire quickly and you'll meet new people often but also find your coworkers to eat lunch with. Talking about lunch, it's ordered for us with a $15 credit! Though I don't get any of the other benifits like health insurance etc, I do get that free lunch and it is amazing. Combined with the very accomidating staffroom with a soda machine and snack galore, I'm well fed. There's also alot of 3d printers around. I've gotten to print many prototypes through there, often splitting one part into multiple prints that run simultaniously to save time. By the end of the day I can run through 5 prototypes of a part. They also gave me a laptop to workon and a desktop to work on too. I don't get to keep it forever, but while I'm here, It is the fastest computer I've ever used all smashed into a small dell pc case that's very unassuming.
Do I like it?
Hell yeah. I can recommend to anyone, Hadrian Automation is a great place to intern at. I'm not going to mention my hourly pay directly because I might get in trouble for that, but I'm very happy with it.
Why haven't you posted on your blog more?
If you really are stalking me virtually through this blog, I'll be sure to update it more often with what's going on in my life. At least the cool parts that the void would like me to cast into it and for the deep state to collect. Stay hydrated and thanks for reading.