A group of EIT students visited a leading engineering firm in Western Australia, Hofmann Engineering.
These kinds of visits articulate the processes and roles of engineers in manufacturing and automation. They are beneficial for students that will soon occupy roles within manufacturing and other engineering processes.
According to Dr Arti Siddhpura, one of the EIT lecturers that joined the site visit, the day gave insight into the following:
- Students were able to see products being manufactured at Hofmann Engineering in the areas of Mining, Marine, Defence Defense, Automotive, Transport, Energy, Aerospace and more recently in the MetroNet Railway in Perth.
- Students could witness various machine tools ranging from some vintage machines, requiring very highly skilled operators, to some highly-sophisticated machines found in modern workshops.
- Students were able to see the theory they learned in practice.
- Various gear manufacturing processes, tools and machines were also presented in practice on the day. Some of the machinists were enthusiastic and talked to students about their work and how they achieve very tight tolerances and level of precision in gears.
On the day the team from Hoffman Hofmann Engineering covered various industry trends in the world right now, and how these are being implemented.
• The personnel who led the visit made sure to be quite knowledgeable and made sure to provide the visiting group from EIT with in-depth information. This included a lot of technical and non-technical questions (like how to secure a position at Hofmann Engineering).
“A highlight was the was seeing a gigantic girth gear (15 m diameter) being manufactured! None of us has ever seen a gear that big in our life!” Says Dr Siddhpura.
We would like to thank Hofmann Engineering for opening its doors to us.
The firm opened in 1969 and has provided specialist-engineered parts and services to leaders in the mining, defence, transport, and energy industries.
They have a strong focus on research and development and as a result, Hofmann Engineering is key to developing and refining new processes and methodologies and is an integral part of the overall business.
Hofmann Engineering has over 500 employees with seven manufacturing facilities in Australia, Canada, Chile and Peru with offices in China and India.