IN THE NEWS: PROFILES
BREAKING THE MOLD, MAKING THE MOLD
She may not fit the stereotypical mold of a mechanical engineer, but this UNH alum fills the bill
by Virginia Stuart
Mechanical engineering isn't as "oily, dirty, and grimy" as people think, according to Ginny Ross, the only woman engineer at Renaissance Design, Inc., in Portsmouth. "There is a presumption that you understand the inner workings of a crankcase," she says, "which I still don't really know too much about."
Ross may not know her way around a crankcase, but she definitely knows her way around the latest computer-assisted design (CAD) software. She spends a lot of time manipulating colorful images on a computer screen--making 3-D parametric models of athletic shoes, for example, or subjecting models of metal or plastic parts to the stresses of everyday life to see where and when failure will occur.
Ross also uses two laser digitizer machines, which the company believes are unique in New England, to scan three-dimensional objects for the purpose of reverse engineering. A laser digitizer was used, for example, when RDI helped Milton Bradley recreate the original Monopoly playing pieces--including a miniature elephant and urn--for the game's 60th-anniversary edition.
"The reality with any engineering field is that you spend most of your time in dress-up clothes in front of a computer," Ross says. But she does enjoy the occasional opportunity to get her hands dirty. After working on the design of an exercyle, for example, she worked with a machinist to put the parts together into the finished product.
That project had a familiar feel to it. "As a teenager I was always taking my bike apart and putting it back together," she recalls. It took her some time to convert that early interest in mechanics into a career. After receiving a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Oregon in 1979, she spent five years as a counselor in an Outward Bound-style program, followed by six years working as a carpenter. She received her master's degree in mechanical engineering from UNH in 1993.
The rewards of engineering, she's found, are many. "You get to visit companies and find out what other people's worlds are all about. Sometimes it amazes me how much time effort, expense, and energy are being put it into some little product that I never thought about--like a company up in Canada that makes giant tooling dies that produce 96 molded soda bottles at a time. Those molds are as tall as I am."
In many cases, Ross is able to help manufacturers streamline the process for making new molds. In the past, a shoe manufacturer might have hired an artist to create clay models of a shoe sole, one for each foot in all 17 sizes. Ross can create one computer model, which is easily scaled up or down for all sizes. The dimensions are then fed directly to a numerically controlled (NC) tooling machine, which produces the molds.
Ross also enjoys brainstorming to solve design problems. Once on an airplane flight, for example, she and another engineer figured out how to create a mechanized system for correcting "patient migration" in hospital beds, where, believe or not, patients tend to slump down toward the bottom of a level bed at an average rate of about six inches an hour.
But for Ross, who spent years in the great outdoors helping people communicate their feelings, some of the best moments are at her desk, in front of the computer, working with abstract mathematical models. "Sometimes what I enjoy is really immersing my head in a problem to the point where I'm totally oblivious to the people around me for an hour or two."