Our customers are keeping us so busy we’re proud to announce we’ve added 2 engineers and 15 machinists and assembly technicians to our team. As a result, we’ve added a much-needed second shift.
“Our No. 1 goal remains minimizing customer downtime,” said Jack Conway, AGW president. “To continue doing that, we’re growing our team with the most skilled people we can find for every position we fill.”
For example, take our two newest engineers.
Aaron Hildebrand, with an Auburn University B.S. degree in physics, joined our team as a scheduler soon after graduation.
“When I was planning and scheduling, I learned what I didn’t learn in college, which included a lot of advanced physics and work with circuits and thermal dynamics,” he said. “As a scheduler, I learned our internal processes, why we do what we do and how we do it.”
Now that he’s been promoted to engineer, Aaron is responsible for the entire journey of a gearbox. As part of the engineering team, which often collaborates on problems and solutions, he feels his slightly different perspective, which often focuses more on why than how, is an asset to the team.
Our other new engineer Zac Chin, an Auburn grad with a B.S. in mechanical engineering, took a different path. His first job after graduation was as a mechanical design engineer for Human One, a human sculpture that moves. Its creator, Beeple Studios in Charleston, South Carolina, calls it “the first human in the metaverse.”
To clarify, it’s a life-size constantly moving and changing 3D digital human form projected into a glass cage. From an outsider’s point of view, it’s a mixture of art, science and engineering. If you’re wondering what Human One has to do with gearboxes, Zac says it required him to apply the problem-solving skills he learned in school: “Break a goal into small manageable steps, adapt when things don’t go according to plan and create new steps.”
In their spare time, both Aaron and Zac pursue a variety of technical hobbies. Aaron is a licensed ham radio operator who has built much of his own equipment, and Zac enjoys Formula 1 car racing, with his own complete simulated racing gig.
They also both agree that the work they do at Atlanta Gear Works really matters.
“A good portion of our business is pulp and paper mills,” said Aaron. “We help the infrastructure of our country in a good way.”
“Paper mills are big industries that fly under the radar,” said Zac. “We don’t normally think of them, but we use their products every day in everything we do. What we do is keep them running.”