Located in Northern NJ in the midst of a 1000 acre property lies one of the U.S Army's premier research and development facilities. Much of Picatinny Arsenal cannot be seen from the highway that runs directly past it. One can only notice the barbed wire fence and signs labeled "No Trespassing" as driving along interstate 15. This summer I had the privilege of stepping inside those fences and finding out what all the fuss was about. I was assigned to the Rapid Prototyping lab where cutting edge tank armaments and artillery equipment were manufactured and tested. As a junior at Tufts University studying Mechanical Engineering this was an opportunity of a lifetime and I was excited to get started.

The one thing that you first notice when you step inside a facility such as Picatinny is that everyone is an engineer. I worked along side 2 other mechanical engineers, and a process engineer who ran the entire machine shop. The shop itself consisted of over 150 individual machines, ranging from simple milling machines and lathes to machines that cost over $100,000. Inside the machine shop was a smaller room that contained two lathes, which when ran under the right temperature and humidity conditions could produce a part to within a 0.0001 tolerance. In order to monitor and ensure that parts were being produced to the specifications entailed in the drawings there was an inspection lab. Any part produced, in theory, would be ran through the inspection lab to make sure that all dimensions were within the specified tolerances. If a part was off in any dimension it would be thrown out and another one manufactured in its place. Money, time, energy were of no concern, the only thing that mattered was perfect production.

Some of the parts produced at Picatinny over the last 20 years range from depleted uranium shells used by the tanks in the gulf war, to firing control mechanisms, to most recently the armor plating used to protect Hum-V's from land mine explosions in Afghanistan. While at Picatinny I worked on a project that had to do with welding titanium plates larger than one inch thick together. Along with another engineer we developed a system that monitors oxygen and water content in the inert gases used to weld the plates. The system shuts the welder down if the levels rise to high or if an improper combination of gases is used. These types of technologies only land up in the private sector after years of research and development in the public sector. The time and cost needed for such developments can only be undertaken by the government, private companies don't have the motivation or the money for such undertakings, something that I learned this summer.

Creativity and design seem to be more embraced in the public sector than in the private sector. Instead of setting its main goal to maximize profits and minimize costs the public sector seeks only to discover, invent and improve. As I saw many times this summer money and time were meaningless while creative thinking and passion were embraced. It is through these values that our military might is established. Engineers, designers, people with crazy ideas are able to take their designs to the furthest extent. As an employee at Picatinny I was sent to a $3000 software class, given a state of the art $3000 computer, and given over $10,000 as a budget for my welding design project. With unlimited resources I was able to have a pure engineering experience where my designs could be tested and thought about without the pressures of profit maximization and efficiency. If there was one thing that I appreciated and valued from my experience it would be this aspect. Nowhere else can the engineering field be more pure than in governmentally funded projects.

Overall my experience at Picatinny arsenal can be summarized as eye opening. I learned a great deal about actual engineering, about the government and about the benefits of government work. I would encourage any engineering student to work for an engineering company funded by the government. A true flavor for engineering as a science and not as a job can be experienced by laying aside those things that restrict creativity and design. Money for one thing is something that a facility such as Picatinny has no worries about, and it is because that they have all resources at their disposal that such ingenious designs emerge every so often to push technology further and further down the track. To be a part of this technological push, if only for a summer was an honor and a pleasure.

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