News from our apprentice – Blog 16

Since my last blog I’ve been busy finishing my college work to complete my Level 2 NVQ and Level 3 BTEC. It felt great to have completed all of my projects and to hand all of my work in to be signed off. This also included being observed by my NVQ Assessor, such as changing the oil on one of our guillotines and working with CAD. I don’t get my results until August, but I’m on target for a distinction overall for the BTEC and confident I will pass the Level 2 NVQ.

I will continue my NVQ work through to Level 3 and in September I will be returning to college to begin a Higher National Certificate (HNC) in Mechanical Engineering. My reasons for continuing on this subject is that I’d like to carry on learning and feel that the Level 3 BTEC provides a basic understanding of Mechanical Engineering and I would like to go into more depth with the subject. There will be more paperwork involved with the course, but the course fits nicely with the development required for my role at Parafix and is project based, which I find really beneficial for problem solving.

Aside from my studies and alongside my day to day work, I’ve been visiting some of our machinery suppliers. We are investing in a new plotter and to ensure we get one that fits ours and our customers’ needs, I visited the supplier to test it with our materials and to look at the available functionality. This helped us determine what would expand our capabilities and provide a better/faster service for customers.

I also visited a rotary manufacturer to discuss specific jobs and their capability requirements. I’d like to work with servo driven units as they offer higher accuracy and for one job in particular we don’t have the right units on site. The manufacturer was able to confirm that we would need a new unit rather than updating our existing servos.

Now that my college work is complete I can look forward to my upcoming holiday, ready to begin another year of studies and the final year of my apprenticeship.