New customer service technician for Power Gems LA – can also fix your Rube Goldberg machine
Power Gems in LA has started a chain reaction with the appointment of Francis Cuevas to the after-sales team.
Francis, aged 25, is a graduate student in electrical engineering from California State University, Northridge:
“I always had an interest in math at an early age,” he says “but I didn’t want to have a calculator on me all the time. I believe electrical engineering and power systems have a nice balance between number crunching and working with something hands on.”
While studying, Francis worked as a server in a restaurant, the Full Throttle Sports Bar at Six Flags Mountain. Power Gems is his first job since graduating, but Francis intends to carry on at the theme park located in Santa Clarita, because ‘it’s really fun even when it’s chaotic. I like Six Flags the most the busier it is’.
From chaos to calm
That attitude is serving him well as he learns to service and repair our full range of high speed ballasts:
“Everything at Power Gems is new and challenging. I’m enjoying learning about what it takes to make the machines work,” he says.
Francis joins Jeremy and our after-sales team in Santa Clarita, with plenty of support from the engineers in Manchester HQ: “I like how I can ask Trevor and Kevin questions, but as soon as I clock in they are about ready to clock out. Be sure to give those two lots of overtime just in case I need that extra phone call,” he jokes.
Creating Rube Goldberg
After he mentioned during his interview for the job, designing a Rube Goldberg machine (for readers in the UK, think Heath Robinson), we asked Francis to explain:
“Back when I was at the College of the Canyons, there was a competition to design and build the best Rube Goldberg machine. Our team’s goal was to add sugar cubes to a cup of coffee in the most complicated way possible. It was a lot of fun,” he explains.
Rube Goldberg machines are created to perform a simple task through a multi-step chain reaction; it’s over-engineering at its best.
“In one bit we used music to create a vibration that would push a metal ball down a ramp. In another, we had a small programmable car that drove in a complex path that eventually knocked an object over. We had balloons that would emerge from a box; video game cases that fell over like dominoes; and, my favourite part is where we had a TV with a game console setup. Something would fall on top of one controller, trigger something cool on the screen, and cause a second controller to vibrate continuing the chain of crazy things happening. The whole thing was blatantly over the allowed size limit, but we won anyway.”
The ethos, of overly-complicated and overly-big, couldn’t be further from our own. All Power Gems products are based on an advanced design using the latest silicon carbide power device technology.
Every parameter has been improved – to give you smaller, lighter and more reliable ballasts. Learning to build a Rube Goldberg machine will help Francis appreciate the ease and simplicity of maintaining our ballasts.
We’re delighted to welcome Francis to the Power Gems team.
Dedicated repair and service facilities in Los Angeles, Manchester (UK) and Shanghai.
