Industry goes to university

Great initiative of Hungarian companies of world brands leading the international electronics industry: Robert Bosch Ltd., Texas Instruments Hungary Ltd. and Würth Elektronik Hungary Ltd. to develope the cooperation between industry and university youth.

The closing event, the workshop day of the "Industry goes to university" lecture series and competition was held on June 5, 2018 at the University of Óbuda, Kandó Kálmán Faculty of Electrical Engineering.

The project launched this spring at the beginning of the semester with three lectures on Power Supplies design, DC/DC converters and practical engineering techniques used for EMC design. The speakers were electrical engineers with at least ten years experience and one of them was an English speaking one. There were about 20-25 students following the lectures constantly out of whome 6 teams of 1-3 people were formed and participated in the competition.

The organizers of the "Industry goes to university" lecture series and compe-tition had several goals to achieve:
• To get the the students and talented engineers of the future acquainted with the companies.
• To test engineering competencies in practice at the university.
• To call attention to the need and development of certain "secondary" skills.

The organizers entirely agreed that, besides the essential technical content, it is crucial to be able to demonstrate, perform and publish the idea properly, since one of the requirements of later successes is how the future engineer can present and defend his ideas.
The practical part of the assignment was to design a DC / DC power supply, to acquire, build and measure parts, connected to the theme of the lectures. In addition, students had to prepare documentation and present the results in the workshop. The main goal of the inventors of the project was to provide the most practical example for the students, leading them from design to the end product. The topic was chosen on the concept of one development platform used by Bosch Budapest. There was a 7 x 7 cm, two layers PCB with standard connectors specified in order not to have the EMC test determined by the physical design of the PCB.

Everyone was excited about the day of the workshop which became immediately a friendly, engineering exchange of views based, constructive and exciting meeting. Two test station were established, one for examination of the static and dynamic operation of the switching power supply units with oscilloscope and one for EMC measurements using "meter-tent" and spectrum analyzer. The competing teams could follow the measurements and results of all teams. The students were delighted with the constructive questions that emerged during the measurements and with sometimes necessary criticisms.

After the lunch break, the students / teams participating in the competition presented their submitted documentation and the just finished test results. The evaluation was based on the following criteria and weighting:
• EMC test (30%)
• Implementation of technical specifications (20%)
• Technical documentation (20%)
• Expert opinion (20%)
• Performance level (10%)

Six teams participated in the final competition, from which the jury of representatives of companies and university instructors selected the first three players in the money award based on predetermined scoring:
1. Gábor Baross
2. Renato Bogár and Dániel Hajnal
3. Marcell Pál

During the lectures we could see perfectly implemented technical solutions, incredibly imaginative homemade EMC test methods, great documentation and excellent performances and of course there were less successful technical solutions or weaker performances as well. The organizers, according to their goals, encouraged and acknowledged every participant's endeavor at the announcement of the results and the less successful teams were assured also that not all start up projects end up in mass production either.

István Gnyálin, Márk Csörnyei, Gábor Szőke, Tamás Kővágó, Attila Levachich, Szabolcs Farkas, Dr. György Schuster, Tiborné Vincze

The positive feedback of the students and the faculty, as well as the companies proved the success of the idea and the organization. Perfecting the competition announcement, improving the theme of the seminars we hope to be able to involve even more "future engineers" in similar initiatives, helping their preparation to become even more efficient and successful in real life.

We would like to thank the Kandó Kálmán College, the Kandó Foundation and the University of Óbuda's Kandó Kálmán Electrical Engineer Faculty for supporting and cooperating in carrying out this event. The enthusiasm, devotion and selflessness of the experts of the three well known companies are remarkable. In addition to their high levels of daily workload, they still had the energy to introduce the professionals of the future the practical engineering activity secrets.

Our appreciation goes to the organizers: István Gnyálin and Márk Csörnyei – Robert Bosch Ltd., Gábor Szőke and Tamás Kővágó – Texas Instruments Hungary Ltd., Attila Levachich and Szabolcs Farkas – Würth Elektronik Hungary Ltd., Dr. György Schuster, Director of the Institute / Research Deputy Dean, Tiborné Vincze, representative of the Kandó Foundation for their great activity!

If you want to read this article in hungarian, click here.

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