Between designing new parts on SolidWorks and working on his car, Zack Lindsey keeps busy. While Lindsey grew up besides the Rocky Mountains as a Colorado native, he was taking apart and rebuilding anything he could get his hands on; he was destined to be an engineer before he even knew it. Eventually, Lindsey graduated from CU Boulder with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering with a minor in economics. Completing a bachelor’s program is no small feat, and Lindsey reflects on his toughest class: “The capstone senior project was definitely the most immersive class [I took]. It’s really like a mini engineering job; that’s how I’d describe it. You’re doing all the steps in the engineering process—you’re designing, making sure your customer is happy, purchasing parts, testing everything, manufacturing everything. It was really comprehensive.” Lindsey later confirms that whilst this was the most challenging class he took, it was also the one that prepared him the most for his career outside of school.

“[My team] worked with NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association), and we designed a LiDAR scanner. Essentially, it was a big gimble mount that had a LiDAR laser underneath, and they wanted to be able to point it in any direction in the sky within a whole dome without it ever being limited.” LiDAR is an acronym for “light detection and ranging” and is a method of laser sensing used by scientists and meteorologists to study different environments, both natural and manmade. “The LiDAR beam detects particulates in the atmosphere, and it allows us to get data on how much particulate is in atmosphere, [as well as] its direction and speed. So it’s really helpful for high level and low level wind maps, making predictions, and finding the highs and lows in a [specific] area.” LiDAR isn’t only used for weather-predicting purposes, however—it can also be found in everyday items, such as phones and cars. Apple began utilizing it in 2020, and now the entirety of the iPhone series uses it to enable Face ID and enhance camera quality. Car brands such as Nissan, Subaru, Mercedes, and Volvo have also implemented LiDAR technology, which allows cars to sense any objects around them to prevent unnecessary collisions.

After taking a couple months off to recoup from his breakneck studies, Lindsey found a place to land at James Engineering as our design engineer. When asked to describe what a typical day looks like for him here, he laughs and says, “There isn’t really such a thing as an average day. Some days I’m here [at my desk] designing new parts, some days I’m just doing drawings. Other days I need to fix a problem on a machine, so I’ll design something, make the part, go out into the shop, install it, test it, make sure it’s what I want, and make revisions on the computer [if need be].” A tedious process, but one that’s essential for business. Without the engineering team’s relentless drawing, testing, and redrawing, assemblies would fall apart after the first build. “I also organize lists for different machines to figure out what parts they need manufactured, purchased, powder coated, anodized, things like that.” There are a lot of moving parts within James Engineering, and Lindsey’s organization is key to maintaining a smooth operation.

With as many responsibilities as Lindsey carries, he faced a steep learning curve when he first stepped into his position at James Engineering, but he ultimately defeated it with determination. “There’s definitely a lot of tasks I didn’t know how to do beforehand and I kind of just had to learn how to do it on the fly. It has been challenging but it’s been really helpful in the long run.” Here at James Engineering, we encourage asking questions and hands-on experience. Senior engineers are readily available to teach valuable lessons that can be applied in and out of the workplace, and it was these mentors that helped Lindsey find his footing. We urge our engineers to get their hands dirty and help out in the machine shop when they can, as well as execute their own innovative ideas. Afterall, engineering is inherently centered around creativity and problem solving. So as a creator himself, Lindsey finds great satisfaction in perfecting his projects, especially when they are done “on the fly”. He talks on his most rewarding moments at James Engineering: “Every time a machine goes out that door which I’ve done a lot of the design work on it’s really fulfilling, seeing it on the truck and leaving.” Lindsey offers some advice to people who are just getting started as engineers, saying, “The best way to design is to just do it and see if it works. You’re never going to get it right the first time, so you learn from your mistakes. Another piece of advice I’d give is design in a failure point or else the system is going to design it in for you!”

Outside of his time at James Engineering, Lindsey enjoys spending his time working on his car. “I’m a big car guy, so I like to make parts and sell them.” Even when out of the office, Lindsey is developing his skills as an engineer. “I’d love to develop my own racecar parts one day, but I’m not quite there yet.” In the meantime, you can find Lindsey working diligently on different tasks throughout the shop. “The thing that’s helped me the most is learning to work with a manual machine because I’ve really learned what the capabilities of the shop are. [It’s] learning how to make a part in a way that will make it easier for the machinists.”

It's thanks to motivated employees like Zack Lindsey that James Engineering and other manufacturers alike can thrive. Whether they know they want to be an engineer from the start, or discover it years down the line, their knowledge, expertise, and efforts strengthen the engineering world one part at a time.