Arrival
On August 20th at 7 o’clock in the morning, we set of to Munich, where our flight to Brussels took off. We arrived at 12 o’clock and took the train to Deinze, where we first met Luc Dhont, our coordinator in Belgium. He invited us to his home and then brought us to our accommodation, where we stayed for the following 4 weeks.
On the first day, we also visited the VTI Waregem, our partner-school in Belgium. There we got our rental-bikes and we also made a small biking tour through the city.
Waregem
Waregem is a city with about 36.000 inhabitants. It lies between Kortrijk and Gent in the western part of Flandres (dutch-speaking part of Belgium).
Work
Hermann Schnait, ELIET
The Belgish company Eliet produces garden equippement (for example scarifiers or shredders). I worked in the design departement, where I could design a new attachement for an existing machine. Although the company normaly uses an other programm, I could work with CATIA, which i know from school. Originally it was planned, that I can also help producing the prototype, but due to delivery times of various parts, there was not enough time for this. All together, I can just say, that the work was very interresting and a learned a lot about design and CAD.
Stefanie Schauer, Vanhoutte
I started my work with Vanhoutte on 23. August. The company is work small family business where the father, mother, uncle and two sons. My day began at 8 o´clock and I worked up to 17 o´clock. I worked in the workshop for the first two weeks. I worked a lot with the CNC milling machine. I learned many new things about programming. I also became familiar with the Drahterrodiermaschine and the milling machine. I worked with my boss Gunther Vanhoutte. I also followed the production of gears and keyways. In the third and fourth week I constructed with the program “OneSpace Designer”. In the beginning work with this program was a little difficult, but I learned to work with it quickly. Summary: I really liked the work at Vanhoutte,I have learned very much. Also, my colleagues were very nice and friendly and I was well received in the company. I would do such an internship there again and would recommend it to everybody to use every chance of getting it.
Klaus Brandner, Bekaert
Bekaerts main focus is on progressive metal transformation and coatings and is also the biggest manufacturer of drawn wire worldwide. The stand Bekaert Engineering is located in Ingelmuster, the place where they design and produce mashines for the production of wire and where I worked in the designing department. My work included on the one hand the development of a weight-reduced, already existing rotor, as well as a braking device for a machine and on the other hand of a variety of different 2D and 3D models, which I created with the program “OneSpace Designer”. My work environment was a big designing office in which approximately worked 100 people and they were all very concentrated during work. I also want to add that my colleges were very nice and helped my with every problem I had. This internship was very interesting for me because I got to know how it works in a big professional designing office, how to implement projects, for example the production of a machine, and also how people develop specific parts in a team. Moreover my English skills improved because my colleges and I exclusively interacted in English in the company and as a result I want to recommend these internships to everybody.
Leisure time
On our weekends we visited Waregem, Paris and Brussels (by train).
We would like to thank Prof. Weissensteiner and Prof. Pixner for all the organisation and help before and during our internship. Another big ‘Thank you’ for Mr. Luc Dhont and the VTI Waregem, for the organisation and support in Belgium. We would also like to thank the companies, which made our internship possible:
-> Vanhoutte – Mr. Gunther Vanhoutte
-> ELIET – Mr. Frederic Lietaer
-> Bekaert: Tom Vandenborre, Clem Vanhee