Hello there,
Another week in my being as a PhD student passed. Last week was rather quiet and not very spectacular. However, I made first contact with industry partners who are involved in my PhD project. In my case, the PhD is in cooperation with a small to medium-sized company around Stuttgart. The project is based on a German funding program called “Zentrales Innovationsprogramm Mittelstand” short for ZIM. ZIM projects aim to strengthen German medium-sized companies by creating leading innovations to stay internationally competitive. The selection method for ZIM projects is based on the degree of innovation and the potential for good market opportunities. In my case, it is a cooperative ZIM project, meaning the cooperation between a medium-sized company and the Institute for Applied Polymer Technologies at Esslingen University. This is one of the many ways to fund us PhD students as well as the projects we work on.
Besides having an innovative idea, the main criterion to get some sort of funding is the application form. Often, the main aspect is the selling factor because, in the end, you need to sell your idea to some authorizing people who might have little to no background from your idea. I also drafted an application two weeks ago and to get behind the writing style it was completely new for me, coming from my master's thesis.
However, I started finalizing the geometry for my first experiments with my ZIM project partner and started ordering the first parts and creating a CAD model to get offers for an injection molding cavity. Being new to injection molding I had to read a lot about designing an injection molding tool. Fortunately, the tool is very simple and now simulations and other analyses have to be performed. Nonetheless, I had to specify tolerances that I had in my bachelor's degree but since then not used them very often and therefore forgotten. And injection molding needs to have small tolerances especially if thermosetting and silicon materials are involved due to possible lower viscosity compared to thermoplastic materials.
Besides that, our team also finalized some aspects of the founding ceremony of our institute this week. Since a lot of representatives from various companies will be present, we want our ceremony to be flawless. Therefore, we had a little trial on what we would do combined with a photo shoot for the Esslingen University website and newsletter.
Although this blog is mainly about me being a PhD student, I also want to share some little insights on my free time so you can judge a bit better about the overall life as a PhD student in Germany. For the first time this year, the weather was over 25 °C with perfect sunshine on the weekend. Using the good weather my girlfriend and I cycled to Stuttgart on Saturday morning (around 15km) to meet my family. In the afternoon we had a little BBQ with some friends in the garden. On Sunday we went for a little morning run followed by a little bike ride to a burial chapel.
I hope again that I have provided some insight into my journey although it was a rather unspectacular week. See you next week again!
Robin