Employment

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Newbury College (2003 - 2008)

I never planned to end up back at Newbury College , but its money! My PhD funding finished christmas 2002, which ment that I moved from Bath back home to Thatcham. One of my old college lecturers offered me some teaching, website design , which I took. This was intended just as a stop gap whilst I finish the PhD and looked for a better job. The money isn't bad, but have had jobs that I have enjoyed more, much more!!! This soon snowballed into several other courses and a few other odds and ends. It has been good experience, but has an incredibly high amount of work besides teaching, writing notes, assignments, paper work, practical preperation and so on.

I have also been using the Moodle VLE system to make my courses available to students inside and outside of lessons.

University of Bath (1999 - 2002)

When I started my PhD at the University of Bath, postgraduate students were asked if they would like to help out in labs, paid of course. The labs were based on Matlab. There were 3 of us, the lecturer and two PhD students helping out. The first year I done this (1999), I worked with Charith and the second year (2000) with Brian Heath. In addition, we (Brian, Neil and Myself) also took part in running some of the UCAS open day presentations and were the only group that had PhD students running the presentation, which the UCAS visitors told us was much better.

Newbury Electronics (1993 - 1999)

I initially started working at Newbury Electronics as work experience. Every Monday afternoon for 6 months i was allowed out from school to work here. I finally finished for the summer and was told that I should work (or given hints at least like you know where you could work, or what about...). Anyway I asked Bob Price who was plant manager at the time if they wanted any extra help for the summer, and they said yes. I was lucky enough though that when I started uni, they took me back on at every holiday, which is thanks to Bob Price, Kevin Forder and Philip King. I started of doing a bit of everything, including:

  • Rough cut (selecting and cutting raw material);
  • CNC operator (drilling and routing boards);
  • HASL operator (putting solder onto the boards);
  • Electroless and gold plating;
  • Printing and developing;
  • Inspection;
  • Goods in and out.

Basically you name it, and I done it. After the first couple of months I managed to get tied down to working the HASL machine and operating the CNC machines (this is the best one). The HASL operation involves cleaning and coating boards with flux and then dipping them into liquid solder, which was usually around 250 degrees celsius, and then cooling them.

The job I loved most though was working in the drill shop running the CNC machines. This involved issuing and cutting the required material, setting the machines up and drilling the PCB's before they went through the rest of the factory. than they would come back to us to be cut/routed out. When I started there were several of us. They were all willing to teach me everthing they knew, which ment I was very soon at the same level as they were, being able to maintain the machines, program and anything else.

 

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