This summer, I’ve been working at C&D Zodiac, a branch of Zodiac Aerospace. I have to commute from my apartment up in LA (my roommates and I are all staying up at USC for the summer) down to Huntington Beach, which is at least 40 mins each way, so that isn’t too fun. But the experience I’ve gotten there over even the past 5 weeks has been amazing.
C&D Zodiac primarily works on airplane interiors, for both commercial and business jets. I was hired into the Advanced Concepts department, which is a subset of the Sales and Marketing branch. Because I am just an intern and working in the engineering field for the first time, my boss decided to let me dabble in a few of the other departments as well. I’ve already gotten to work on a bunch of projects including:
-Building a spreadsheet for a market analysis of both the commercial and business jets industry: basically, getting pricing information for a bunch of different aircraft and trying to predict the total value of each industry and how much of it we have a share in.
-Working with a lead design engineer on the PSU’s (personal service units) for a mock-up of the C-Series commercial jet for Bombardier. The C-series mock-up is now in Paris for the Paris Air Show, and will then go on a 2 year world tour.
-Using Catia to model and design the frame for an Airbus A320, which will be used by my company for its next mock-up. I will also be working on modeling the interior walls of the plane for the project, which is focused on a new overhead bin integration between the A330/340 and the A320. Here is a picture of the basic frame:
I’m sure I’ll get to work on a few other exciting projects in addition to these as the summer goes on! All in all, working at C&D has been great and provided me with some great hands-on experience in an industry that I will most likely end up working in.
