Jake Hartwell joined Tessy Plastics Corp. in July 2020, directly out of college, to support projects related to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
He originally worked the 12-hour night shift on automation assembly lines alongside the molding team and gained experience in running the presses.
When he transitioned to his current role as project engineer, Hartwell was assigned to a program that involved a highly complex assembly that had been in development for a few years.
"This project had been through many generations of improvement and seemed to hit a roadblock at every chance it could. My greatest achievement to date was finally getting the molds fully qualified and moving the assembly into production after several years," he said.
"My current position requires a large team to get projects through qualification, and it has been a learning experience for me to step back and delegate work accordingly," he added.
Many of the projects that Hartwell works on are for medical devices, and many can only be single-use devices.
"However, I still take responsibility to manufacture these in the most sustainable way possible. This includes reducing scrap directly off the production line and also optimizing part design," he said. "In my personal life, I strive to use reusable bottles and such when possible."
Hartwell first became interested in the industry after taking an entry-level plastics course while in college. "I had an incredibly passionate and knowledgeable professor, Gary DeAngelis, who had long worked in the plastics industry, and he got me excited about this particular segment of engineering," said Hartwell, who graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. "I was in school for mechanical engineering at the time, but I was able to add some additional plastics and injection molding related courses into my later years of college."
Hartwell said his father has always been a source of inspiration.
"Growing up, we very rarely threw anything away when it broke [and] always took the time to tear it apart and fix what we could. He never failed to find a way to get an old tool back up and running even after it was past its prime," Hartwell said about his father. "It was observing this work ethic and hands-on experience that really inspired me to go into engineering. Not only did I gain an understanding of the stuff we'd work on, but I also had access to a nearly unlimited supply of tools to use to work on my own projects. I still frequently reach out to my father for advice on projects, and he continues to support me with the direction I've decided to take in life."