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Manufacturing at JPL is all about precision. The group works with Ph.D.-level scientists, mostly from Cal Tech, to build delicate, one-of-a-kind instruments that are often the culmination of a decade or more of research. Most of the drawings are to four decimal places — true position. Cournoyer said, "For weight conservation, parts are so thin-bodied (down to 0.001") that it is sometimes hard to differentiate between a burr and the actual wall of the part."
Another challenge for JPL's machinists is working with exotic materials chosen for their low coefficient of thermal expansion. Space is the ultimate vacuum and does not provide an atmosphere that will promote radiation of heat. Components tend to bake inside the spacecraft while cruising to a destination millions of miles away. Then instruments are finally required to perform their tasks in space at temperatures down to -455°F. So they have to deal with unique machining requirements of materials like Kovar® and Zerodur®.
What does this have to do with staffing? Cournoyer found out the hard way when he was trying to quickly build up staff levels during the latter build stage of the MSL (Mars Space Laboratory), now called Curiosity mission, which will launch in 2011. He said, "It takes somebody with finesse for precision making delicate instruments to be able to work here. Our machinists are programmer/machinists. When they sign on for a given part, they own it from the sketch to launch pad. They decide which manufacturing processes to use and write their own CNC manufacturing programs.
"All the resumes I saw from people with Unigraphics skills were looking for positions as design engineers. They only wanted to work behind a desk. I was getting pressured by upper management to grow my staff faster but I just couldn't find machinists proficient in the CAM software we were using. We had a good variety of software but it was not industry-standard software."
What he did see on just about every machinist's resume coming across his desk was Mastercam experience. Cournoyer, who was previously on the faculty of WPI (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), considers himself a scientist/machinist. He was experienced with this CAM software and knew that it could easily provide the tools for precision CNC manufacturing that JPL required. Mastercam CAD/CAM programming was also being taught in the Manufacturing Technology program at nearby Glendale Community College (GCC), which supplies JPL with some of its apprentices. So apprentices would have the benefit of using the same software that they were using in their courses.
Cournoyer made a formal budgetary request to acquire seats of the industry-standard software, and soon his staffing problems were behind him. Instead of automatically rejecting three-quarters of the machinists' resumes, he now had three times as many candidates to evaluate for each position.
The lucky machinist new hires and the apprentices quickly found themselves immersed in a techie manufacturing environment unlike any other. "We have 5000 people here at JPL but only four levels of management," Cournoyer said. "We don't have departments; we have groups. Groups can be a group of scientists, post docs, two machinists, etc. It is very intense."
In addition to being the Group's Manager, Cournoyer is also the Section's Technologist. This allows him to sit in with key scientists from around JPL and look at the future. "This is important to me from a capital budget standpoint," he said. "It puts me in a position to influence the kind of machines JPL will acquire for meeting material and tolerance requirements going forward."
JPL was able to build its contract programming staff to a high of 23 and handle the final manufacturing push for the upcoming MSL Mission. Cournoyer admits to jumping the gun and hiring two Mastercam machinist/programmers immediately after the budget for the seats was approved but not allocated. He said they had to struggle for a few months with other software, but they were off and running as soon as their familiar CAD software was on the network.
Today, only eight of the 23 high-water contract machinists remain at JPL. Most are Mastercam-proficient. When JPL is out of the bathtub again, there may be as many as 30 contract machinist/programmers. At that point Cournoyer estimates that Mastercam will be the software of choice for three-quarters of them.
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