May 16, 2025 • 43 mins
Join Aaron Moncur as he sits down with John Martell, a mechanical engineer with over 14 years of experience in aerospace, medical devices, automation, and geospatial drone services. Discover John's engineering journey, his innovative approach to mechanism design, and how he transitioned from mechanical engineering to data management.
Main Topics:
- Mechanical Engineering Career Path
- Mechanism Design Techniques
- Drone Geospatial Services
- Engineering Leadership
- Automation and Productivity Tools
- The Intersection of Music and Engineering Creativity
About the guest: John Martell is a versatile mechanical engineer with over 14 years of experience across aerospace, product development, and geospatial drone services. He's currently the Director of Data Management at Aero Velocity, he applies tools like QGIS, Python, and LP360 to lead large-scale geospatial projects. His previous roles include Lead Mechanical Engineer at Workhorse Aero and key engineering positions at Pipeline Design & Engineering, where he gained recognition for innovation in automation and medical device testing.
John is known not only for his technical skill and leadership but also for his creative problem-solving and passion for continuous learning. He enhances engineering processes through custom tools and explores artistic pursuits under the name “Olivund,” including composing music for the Being an Engineer podcast. His blend of engineering expertise and creativity defines him as a modern, multifaceted professional.
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About Being An Engineer
The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.
The Being An Engineer podcast is brought to you by Pipeline Design & Engineering. Pipeline partners with medical & other device engineering teams who need turnkey equipment such as cycle test machines, custom test fixtures, automation equipment, assembly jigs, inspection stations and more. You can find us on the web at www.teampipeline.us
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
John Martell (00:00):
There was a need at the new company, and I, I
said, I'm I can do that. I'mready for this adventure. It
just kind of took off fromthere. You
Aaron Moncur (00:24):
John, hello and welcome to the being an engineer
podcast today. We're so excitedto be speaking with guest John
Martel, a seasoned mechanicalengineer with over 14 years of
hands on experience spanningaerospace, medical devices,
automation and geospatial DroneServices. He currently serves as
(00:45):
Director of data management atArrow velocity, and brings a
unique blend of technicalleadership, creativity and
passion for both engineering andmusic. And this is a special
treat for me, because John is aformer co worker of mine. We
worked together at pipeline formany years, and he is just a
(01:06):
wonderful person, a supertalented engineer, and it's just
a pleasure and a delight to getto catch up with him and talk
again and share some of theinsights and engineering wisdom
that he has picked up over theyears. So John, thank you so
much for being on the showtoday.
John Martell (01:22):
Yeah, thanks, Aaron. I appreciate you inviting
me on the podcast. So
Unknown (01:27):
thinking back to when your engineering career first
started, or before maybe whatwas it that made you decide to
become an engineer? Well,obligatory, used to play with
Legos all the time as a kidstory here, but partially true.
My grandpa was a mechanic.
John Martell (01:47):
I wanted to be a mechanic. Because of that. I was
really interested in cars, but Italked with my mom about that,
and my grandpa about it, andthey said, well, instead of
working on cars like as amechanic, why don't you maybe
design the cars one day? And sothat was in my mind. And then I
took shop class, and I likedmath and science. I took other
(02:10):
engineering classes, weldingclasses, and it just kind of
built on itself to the pointwhere, yeah, that's what makes
sense. Because I think I'm goodat it and I like it, I will
apply. I initially applied andgot into ASU as aerospace, but I
transitioned to mechanicalbecause I thought it would be
broader, based on my experience,I thought it would be a better
(02:33):
fit. And, yeah, that's, that'swhere it started.
Aaron Moncur (02:38):
Do you ever think back and wish, darn, I wish I
stayed with aerospace. Or areyou pretty happy that you went
the mechanical route?
John Martell (02:45):
I think I was pretty happy with mechanical.
Yeah. I don't regret not stayingin aerospace. It's something
that I think of like, oh yeah, Istarted with that instead of
Darn I should have,
Aaron Moncur (02:59):
I should have stayed with it. I know what you
mean. I actually started inmanufacturing engineering, and
it's funny to think backsometimes that that was my
initial major, and then theUniversity where I went, they
actually ended that programwhile I was there. And so
mechanical was kind of like thedefault other option. So I went
(03:20):
into mechanical and I'm reallyglad that I have now, like you
said, it's, it's a more broadmajor. I think it's kind of the
Swiss Army knife of engineeringdisciplines, yep. All right,
well, let's talk a little bitabout the time when you were at
pipeline. So this was, it wasabout, what, six years something
(03:40):
like that, that you were there,and you eventually were a
project lead, leading projects,and we did a lot of fixtures.
And towards the end of yourstay, we were getting more and
more into automation, and youled many of those projects. Can
you think of one of thoseprojects that taught you
(04:01):
something pivotable. Pivotable.
That's not a word pivotal aboutthe design or process
optimization.
John Martell (04:11):
We did a lot of work for and we were working. I
was helping, one comes to mind.
I was working on a project withNoah Burke, who you had in a
podcast recently, and MarkBlakey, who are both great,
(04:33):
awesome guys to work with, andsome others, as well as part of
this project. But thissometimes, at least the projects
that we were working on, thescale of the products varies so
much, and getting into this onethat we were trying to solve,
(04:54):
there was. This needle. We weretrying to make this needle,
trying to place the end of thisdevice, the distal end, in a
certain location. And somethingthat, what I learned, and what
was clear at that point wassometimes you just, you think
(05:19):
you have an idea a good way todo something, but it you just
have to go back to the drawingboard several, several times.
Even though you think you mighthave a good solution, you test
it out and it's no it that's notthe right way to do it.
Sometimes you hit a home runright away. And I would say
pivotal is just having thepatience and reminder. Just have
(05:42):
patience when you are trying todo the right design, make sure
that you're doing it correctlyin the right way. And things
take more time sometimes thanyou think they will, I feel
Aaron Moncur (06:01):
like we were, we were learning that lesson
frequently. It always takes moretime that what we do at
Pipeline. It's such a doubleedged sword. It's super fun
because we're always doingsomething new and interesting,
but at the same time it's alwaysnew, and which means we're
always climbing that ladder ofinvention and figuring out, all
(06:21):
right, how do we do this? No onehas ever done it before, so we
need to figure it out. So a lotof fun, but some challenges when
it comes to getting things donein the amount of time that we
quoted. Let's see you are youhave this knack for designing
(06:41):
mechanisms. And I was always so,so impressed with the mechanisms
that you came up with, right?
There's these, these mechanicallinkages, or things like that,
that facilitated motion in acertain way, or performed some
kind of work really cleverly,without having to resort to
electronics or things like that.
(07:04):
What's your process fordesigning a new mechanism?
John Martell (07:09):
Well, first and foremost, the inputs and
criteria requirements are vitalto the success of a mechanism
doing what it needs to do forthe end customer. So that's
that's first and foremost. Youhave to have those written down,
either in a requirementsdocument, which is optimal, or
(07:31):
even just for your own. Noteslike this. Needs to do this, and
it needs to do it like this,even additional notes for
yourself, for myself. I write sothat I can think of and when
things come to mind, make notelike I would like it to be easy
to turn or some things thatmight not necessarily be on the
(07:54):
requirements document, but itaids in some some conceptual
ideation there. I can alsovisualize well, so I try to
envision the required motionwhen I hear of the problem. So I
think about what this mechanism,mechanism needs to do. So
(08:14):
that's, I guess that's part ofmy knack. Maybe is able. I'm
able to have it in my head, butthen I need to get down in CAD
and we need to make it. But sogoing from the inputs, the next
step for me, I usually, and mostalways, actually use pen and
(08:38):
paper like a notebook, a designnotebook, and just make a bunch
of sketches, sketches about likethis is here. This Is there
things that move, if you have adevice or an item that you're
trying to interface with, yourbrain just just thinks
(09:01):
differently and worksdifferently through pen and
paper. It's crazy. You you canthink of something maybe even
just going into CAD would begood. But if you go to pen and
paper, start and it's justpractice like more and more
drawing makes better and bettersketches. So I've been sketching
(09:21):
and drawing my whole life, so Iguess, I guess some people
haven't been doing that, but Ihighly suggest to start right
away practice sketching. Sosketch what you think you need
to do might not even be thewhole mechanism, but then
(09:41):
sometimes just sitting on it andgetting distracted coming back
to it that that's helped me alot, too. So you do some
sketching. I often do a Googlesearch, an image search of.
Something that comes to mind,make notes, a lot of back and
(10:04):
forth. This is just likeiteration of chicken scratch
sketches, sometimes CAD, butusually sketches. And after I
have maybe something reasonablein a sketch pad sketchbook, I go
to SolidWorks, let's say, andmake a movable sketch. That's
(10:27):
usually the thing I do next isin SolidWorks, you can make a
sketch and have it static withdimensions, and it gets black
because it's all constrained.
That's good. I've I make that afirst position and or in an end
position, initial and finalposition with the same length of
linkages, then I make a newsketch. I feel like I'm rambling
(10:51):
a little
Aaron Moncur (10:53):
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(11:39):
keep going. This is great. Ilike that you talk about the
Google search as well. Yeah,that's an underutilized tool,
right? We always try and createthings like from scratch all by
ourselves, but there are alreadyso many ideas out there. And you
might not use an exact idea thatyou find out there, but it
serves as good inspiration. Ithink there was, think I recall
(12:00):
there was some website that youwould reference on occasion as
well, right, like 101mechanisms, or something like
that. 501
John Martell (12:08):
mechanical movements? Yes, yes, you can
actually go to five or 507sorry, 507 movements.com. Has
many that are animated. Now,actually, I use that a lot. I
told other engineers about thatsite a lot. There's also a book
(12:30):
that I have as well calledmechanisms and mechanical what I
have it over here? Yeah, that'sit, mechanisms and mechanical
devices, if you're looking forreally good inspiration, you
could look at that book as well
Aaron Moncur (12:45):
mechanisms and mechanical devices and 507
mechanisms online, right? 507movements.com movements, 507
movements.com great referencesources. Oh, yes,
John Martell (12:59):
nice, because a lot of times you don't need to
reinvent the wheel. You justneed to change the size,
reinvent the spokes interface,well, attaches to the car.
Aaron Moncur (13:11):
Yeah, yeah. I find that to be one of the challenges
that engineers have to overcomeis we, we love we're engineers
because we love creating newthings. We love designing new
things, but we don't always needto design something new. In
fact, oftentimes I feel like theengineering goals and the
(13:32):
commercial goals can be at oddswith one another, because the
engineer wants to designsomething even better, right?
That's perfect and new andinteresting, but the commercial
goals for any engineeringorganization are to do it as
fast as you can for as littlemoney as you can, and oftentimes
that just means findingsomething that already works,
and maybe, like you said,retrofitting it a little bit so
(13:55):
it interfaces with with yourapplication. So after
John Martell (13:58):
you do the research, like I was discussing,
I would go into SolidWorks andstart making that movable
sketch. What I was trying todescribe was that you make a
mechanism in a start positionand an end position, and then
you close that sketch and thenmake a second sketch that has
(14:19):
the mechanism parts constrainedby the length and the pivot,
like we're saying if we'remaking a four bar mechanism,
let's say you have this the fourbars the same length and the
same pivot points as that mainsketch, but you don't constrain
it so that it cannot move. Youmake it so that it can move. And
(14:40):
you can actually see the motionin that sketch referencing that
first sketch. And then if youneed to change it a little bit,
you can modify the first sketch,close out, remove the second
sketch, not remove it. Move itagain, and you can see it move
around and see if it'll do whatyou do. You want it to do. I've
(15:02):
also used Excel and referenceequations for mechanisms to to
ensure that I'm using the rightmechanism or right linkage,
let's say for the rightapplication. Yeah.
Aaron Moncur (15:17):
Yeah. That's great. Thank you for walking us
through that process, I thinkthat sketches in SolidWorks are
probably also underutilized, andthey could be super powerful.
There's a trick that I used touse back in the day when I was
doing a lot of CAD where I wouldcreate a free body diagram in a
sketch, and I would apply theforces, and I would use lengths
(15:41):
to designate the force. The wordis escaping me, the the force
values, the magnitude of theforce, not just the magnitude
the vectors, also. That's why itwas helpful doing it in a
sketch. And then as I changed,you know, one of the loads or
one of the force vectors,everything would update
(16:03):
automatically, right? Because itwas in a sketch, and I had
different constraints andequations that were driving
everything, and that was areally helpful way to utilize
sketches to visualize how asystem, a free body diagram,
changes as you manipulatedifferent values. Yep,
John Martell (16:20):
That's definitely helpful.
Aaron Moncur (16:22):
All right. Well, at Arrow velocity, you're now
managing data related to dronegeospatial services. How did you
make that leap going frombecause you were like, I mean,
you did a little bit of softwareas well, but you were primarily
mechanical in the work thatyou've done previously and now
(16:43):
your your data and software,which is very different than
what you were doing before. Howdid you make that that jump, and
what have been some of thelearning curves or surprises,
things that you didn't expect?
How is that all going?
John Martell (16:59):
Well? I did a lot of Excel work and code like
macros for Excel and forSolidWorks. And I also helped
implement PDM SolidWorks, PDM atpipeline, and also before that,
my company, prior to that. Andso I was kind of in the realm of
(17:24):
that as some specialty of my myexperience, I would say, and
there was a need at the newcompany and a shift. And I I
said, I'm I can do that. I'mready for this adventure, and it
just kind of took off fromthere. I was already recognized
(17:49):
as someone to be able, someoneable to lead that department or
portion of the company. And soit Yeah. What we do now is we
analyze and take the data fromdrones captured data captured
using drones, LiDAR, MSI, and westore the data. We analyze the
(18:17):
point clouds, and we track theprogress of the the projects,
and interface with the customersas needed, delivering the
products to them, if
Aaron Moncur (18:31):
you can talk about it, and no problem if you can't.
What? What are your drones usedfor? And what's the goal? The
objective of acquiring andanalyzing all of this data.
Yeah,
John Martell (18:44):
I can, yeah, certainly talk about that. So
one use case is in Mississippi,there are a lot of dams and
watersheds, so we help them togather data. Instead of a
surveyor with a stick and asensor a laser. We use our
drones to scan the profile ofthe dam to make sure that it is
(19:07):
not compromised in any way,especially after a big storm.
And so they get a lot more datausing the drone scanning, and
it's safer for the operators,because they don't have to be
near the alligators and theother wildlife in and around
that area that's not normallytraversed by human traffic. So
(19:30):
it's a win win in that case, wealso scan farms for the farmers,
especially who have irrigationfields for rice and soybeans,
and they need a an optimal placeto place poly pipe, which is
(19:53):
method of irrigation that apolymer pipe, a thin pipe that
you. It could be 12 inches indiameter, 15 inches diameter
that they poke holes into, andthe water escapes on one or
either or both sides of thatpipe that's placed on the field
at at some point in the in thefarming process, and we they
(20:18):
need to have it in a goodlocation in order to properly
water the whole field. And so wegather the elevation data for
the fields, and we help torecommend a certain path for
that to go. So we give them thatinformation or report and
different geo spatial files thatthey can use in the CSV that
(20:42):
they can plug into their theirtractor if they need to and
follow that path.
Aaron Moncur (20:47):
Very cool. I did not know that you could plug a
CSV into a tractor. This is newsto me. So do you sell these as
like kits that the purchasingorganization then uses? Or you
do all this as a service.
John Martell (21:02):
It's a service that we take our drones down to
the location that is needed andscan and scan the area, and we
bring the data back in house,and we then provide the
information at the end of ouranalysis to the farmer or the
(21:25):
the entity that would like it,and then they can use it as they
need to, to make decisions andand, yeah, improve their
process. Very
Aaron Moncur (21:37):
cool, very cool.
All right. Well, let me take avery short break here and share
with all the listeners that thebeing an engineer podcast is
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(22:00):
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wave. Dot engineer, and we'respeaking with John Martel today.
So John, you've you've managedboth younger junior engineers as
well as senior engineers. Whatdo you have any advice for
(22:23):
engineers who are interested inmaking that transition from an
individual contributor toengineering leadership?
John Martell (22:33):
Yeah, I think it is important and good to look at
what your superiors and previoussuperiors do and don't do that
you like and don't like, andthink about the lessons learned
that you've witnessed as you'regoing about your current role
(22:56):
and thinking about Your pastexperience, and if you're
currently transitioning to amanager type role, it's good to
find a way to get past theimposter syndrome that you may
have because I went through thatyou have to ensure to remind
(23:16):
yourself that there's a reasonwhy you're getting This new
role, and at the same timestaying humble and knowing that
you don't know everything, andyou're you're still in in the
middle of a transition, so justgive yourself a break.
Aaron Moncur (23:32):
Wonderful advice, really, really solid advice.
What were some things that youdid to overcome imposter
syndrome?
John Martell (23:41):
Some of it was a fake it till you make it kind of
thing.
Aaron Moncur (23:45):
I love the honesty. I've certainly been
there. You have
John Martell (23:48):
to believe that there's a reason, like I said,
the reason why you are where youare and people listen to you for
a reason. That's why I said,stay humble, because people will
listen to you. Listen to whatyou say, and if you get too
(24:09):
egotistical or or cocky orwhatever, and you're not
remembering why someone mighthave put you in the new role,
then your words, what you say,and don't say, it'll be taken,
could be taken out of context,and there's a whole, whole mess
of repercussions. Just, yeah,you have to be extra careful,
(24:36):
but you don't have to be toocareful. I think it's it's good
just to be, be yourself.
Aaron Moncur (24:46):
Yeah, good advice, be yourself. Let's talk about
some of the tools that you'vebuilt over the years, not just
physical tools, but but softwaretools as well. You mentioned
doing a lot with Excel macros. Iknow you've got. Some experience
with Python, of course, lots ofSolidWorks experience. Thinking
back, can you, can you identifymaybe one of your favorite tools
(25:10):
that you've ever built? It couldbe hardware as well, up to you
and what what was special orunique about it for you.
John Martell (25:16):
Thinking back, doing all the work for we had a
lot of exports that we needed todo for them, a huge drawing
package. It's not something thatSolidWorks has built in. So I
(25:36):
made a macro to automaticallyexport all of the the common
files, like PDF, step, etc, andplace it in a format that they
requested. So I made a macrothat had several steps to it,
(25:56):
and it was kind of elaborate,but it worked, and I was pretty
proud of making that and helpingto save time with the Save
pipeline time and get theproducts to them faster than if
we were to do every one of themmanually.
Aaron Moncur (26:15):
I remember this.
It was for smaller dryingpackages, not that big a deal.
But like you said, for largerdrawing packages, where maybe
there are, you know, a few 100parts in there, it would take a
long time, because they wantednot just, you know, a dump of
all the files, but a veryspecific folder structure,
(26:35):
folders within nested folders.
Some of them were zippedfolders, and others were just
loose files, but a very specificconfiguration of all of this.
And when you have a big assemblyand you're having to create
right the PDFs, the stepexports, the native files all in
different sub folders and zippedfolders in a very specific
(26:58):
structure. I It would, it wouldtake, easily, days for some of
these larger assemblies, andthen with your macro, I think it
was literally like, I mean, thehuman time required was a few
minutes something like that. Soit was, it was an incredible
time saving something that wasreally cool and heavily utilized
(27:19):
by the whole team. All right, alot of the podcast listeners,
not all of them, but a lot ofthem, are younger in their
careers, maybe the first fiveyears or so. What are a couple
of things that you wish, thatyou wish you knew when you were
a young engineer, that you knownow? I
Unknown (27:45):
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John Martell (28:24):
Yeah, part of it might be just new to the
corporate or business world,like out of college, basically
into the job world. Part of itmight be engineering related,
but what I wish I would haveknown was how fast it goes by
(28:49):
and not to take your health oractive nature for granted,
because you could get stuck in,stuck behind a computer screen
or in front of a computerscreen, I guess, if you want to
look at the front of it forlonger than you might want to,
(29:11):
if you don't take breaks andmove around, and it can take a
toll if you're just sitting Infront of computer it's not just
engineering, but just ingeneral, it's good to take
breaks and go walk aroundmultiple times a day. Go talk to
(29:33):
people, be social, be active andand don't forget to play, even
in your your elderly 20s and30s, yeah,
Aaron Moncur (29:49):
yeah. Recently, I work from well right now I John
and I were just talking aboutthis before we started
recording. I. I have ACL surgerya couple weeks ago, so I'm not
extremely mobile at the moment,and I'm used to being pretty,
pretty active, working outseveral times a week, and doing
(30:11):
jiu jitsu several times a week,and and I can't really do any of
those things, certainly not theJiu Jitsu, but I can do a little
bit of weight lifting. So whatI've been doing lately, I can't
really do a full like workout,but I've been setting up the
home gym just so I can go inthere, like every hour or two
and just do like, a quick set offour different exercises. And it
(30:35):
takes, like, literally, threeminutes to do this, and it's
great, you know? It gets theblood pumping, and it gets my
body moving a little bit. And Idon't have to spend the full
time doing a workout. I can'treally do a full workout in my
current condition anyway, but Iget in there for, you know,
three minutes at a time, two orthree times a day, and it really
(30:55):
helps break things up. And Ialways feel more like energized
and some mental clarity aftermoving my body a bit. Then, just
like you said, if you letyourself fall into that trap of
sitting for hours and hours onend, it takes its toll. It
happens quickly.
John Martell (31:15):
Yeah, and I liked how at some point you had gotten
that rowing machine at thepipeline. And you would go in
there, I would go in theresometimes and just get on there
and start moving my body and,
Aaron Moncur (31:30):
yeah, what is one common way that you have seen
engineering teams fail?
John Martell (31:38):
Uh, well, bureaucracy and not having a the
same sense of shared purpose.
I've seen that and there,there's been toxic. I just want
to bring up at this time, theculture that you have created,
starting at I think maybe beforeI was there, but when I was
(32:01):
there, the core values that youinstated, I know you, I think
you instated those while I wasthere, and those are, treat our
customers well, treat our teammembers better. Govern my
productivity, not bureaucracy,suffocate chaos, promote order,
prevent surprises, and also themission statement to promote joy
(32:21):
in the lives of our teammembers. I think those are ways
that you ensure that engineeringteams work together well and do
not have a failing morale,especially. And I just wanted to
thank you for introducing thatto me, because I've tried to
(32:41):
replicate that in my current andand pass position at workhorse.
I was previously a workhorsearrow, and then now at air
velocity, trying to, I think theone of the good books that you
introduced me to was culturecode. And I have tried to
remember the the points thatthey tried, that he tried to
(33:05):
make in there, vulnerability,safety, and then purpose. And so
I try to, in little ways, hereand there, tried to replicate
that. So I appreciate thatthat's that's one thing, one way
that engineerings are better offis because of the communication
(33:25):
and morale and the team, senseof team that is brought out from
those tactics.
Aaron Moncur (33:36):
Thank you, John.
It means, means a lot to hearyou say that. Thank you very
much. I I have thought to myselfon more than one occasion,
because I think what we do atPipeline, it's, it's kind of a
tough business. Yeah, we talkedbefore about how everything we
do is custom, and so we'realways inventing something, and
there's inherent risk whenyou're inventing something
(33:57):
right, things never quite goexactly how you expect them to
go. And I think that one of thereasons we are still alive and
thriving as a company is becauseof the the culture of the team.
Everyone. They work together,they support each other, they
like each other, they help eachother. There's, there aren't
(34:20):
really any, like, siloeddepartments where they're
throwing things over the walland saying, That's not my
problem. That's, that's yourproblem. It's just not like
that. Yeah, and there's, there'svery little like policy or
bureaucracy. Everyone just workstogether to be productive. And I
really think that's one of thereasons that we're we're still
(34:43):
around after 15 years. Soanyway, thank you for saying
that.
John Martell (34:48):
I think it is, and the way that you have customer
base that is return customerbase, I think is also that, or
because of what and how you'veyou. Treated them and how you
interact. It's a personalitygame at that point too. Not a
game, but it's, it's how, howyou treated them as well.
Aaron Moncur (35:10):
The only way that we get anything done is with and
through people. At the end ofthe day, it's, it's all about
relationships with people.
John Martell (35:17):
Sometimes the biggest one is no surprises.
Yeah, yep,
Aaron Moncur (35:22):
that's right, yeah. Gotta prevent those
surprises. Are Michael Hadley,who you know very well. John
likes to say that bad newsdoesn't age well, so yep, get it
out there early. Yeah. Allright. You've been a musician
for for quite a while. In fact,you know, I just remember this
right now as we were talking.
Okay, so all of you listeners,you are in the presence of of
(35:46):
greatness right now, which is,I'm sure, already clear, but the
intro to the being an engineerpodcast, and the outro, for that
matter, was created custom bynone, none other than, uh, John
Martel here, so among many otherpieces of of musical genius. But
that one was, yeah, it was. Itwas generated all by John. So
(36:09):
thank you for the beginning andending of over 280 episodes at
this point. Sure.
John Martell (36:16):
Yeah, no problem.
It was. It's fun. It's fun.
That's what it is. How
Aaron Moncur (36:22):
does musical creativity influence the way
that you think about engineeringproblems? Or does it Are they
completely separate?
John Martell (36:32):
I'm not. I'm not sure that influence is the word
that I would use, but I wouldsee that they're similar created
creativity outlet, I think,slightly different parts of
their brain. Maybe, maybe a lotof engineers are musical in some
(36:53):
instrument, I think, but I cancorrelate the creativity and
diversity of music and musicalstyles with the diversity and
diversity of solutions to aproblem, let's say so. I think
if you're musical, you canvisualize you're not visualizing
(37:15):
music, but it's similar how tohow you can visualize an object,
you can kind of think about thesound or the melody. I would
say, there's a there's acorrelation for me there. I
would say,
Aaron Moncur (37:32):
yeah, yeah. I don't have the musical talents
that you have, for sure, but Ihave always really enjoyed
music. And there was a time whenI started to learn the guitar,
and I didn't get very far, to behonest. I probably got about
seven or eight months into it,and I could do, you know, really
(37:53):
basic things, but it was so fun.
It was so satisfying justhearing the notes and strumming
the guitar playing along with asong in the background. And I
think there there is somethingto that about just how the brain
works. And music unlocksthoughts that you might not have
had otherwise. It unlockscreativity that you might not
(38:14):
have had otherwise. I've
John Martell (38:18):
always listened to varying genres while doing CAD
or while brainstorming. I thinkthe way that my brain works, and
maybe it's a common thing, is Ithink a part of my brain talking
about this music in this way. Ithink part of my brain needs
that distraction or something tolatch onto in order for the part
(38:41):
of my brain that's doing CADfunctionally, to be efficient or
to be guided in some way it'shard to explain. I thought about
that in my first job when I wasdoing CAD work back then, and I
was doing listening to thisreally complex music, thinking
about, how can I almostmultitask, if you will, in this
(39:04):
way. But it's not, it's, I mean,it's obvious you're listening,
is it's passive, but I thinkpart of your brain just gets a
little bit of fuel, orrelaxation, or something,
something, somebodypsychological, all
Aaron Moncur (39:21):
right. Well, let's see just, I think, a couple more
questions, and we'll wrap thingsup here. What is one thing that
you have done or observed toaccelerate the speed of
engineering?
John Martell (39:33):
I think one thing that comes to mind immediately
is something we already talkedabout, macros, scripts, code,
automation improves the speed ofwork immensely, especially for
the mundane tasks or things thatyou just have to do a bunch of
clicks the same way every time,or even maybe a little bit
different each time. But thosetypes of things, automating the
(39:57):
clicks, automating the input,help in. Immensely, and that's a
lot of what I've helped tomanage and help implement. In my
current position, too, is to toimplement code Python scripts
for automatic PowerPointcreation, for instance, from
(40:20):
from data. So in a pipeline, Imade several Excel macros, cell
works macros, those really help.
The other thing too is justsomething besides what we
already talked about, justgetting feedback early. It's
kind of like failing early,getting feedback and talking to
someone else early on, so youdon't go off in a rabbit hole
(40:42):
dead end, helps immensely. So Igreatly recommend that to teams
to just have regular meetings todiscuss or just ask and ask to
help. If you're a manager, justask, how's it going? Do you need
anything? Or do you haveanything that I can review? And
usually the other person ishappy to oblige and go over the
(41:07):
problem at hand, and you cansay, yeah, that looks good. Or,
actually, maybe you can trythis, because when I did XYZ,
this was better. What do youthink? Yeah, yeah. Having,
Aaron Moncur (41:25):
I remember when I was a lot younger, and hearing
about how companies wouldstruggle with various problems,
I would always think to myself,why don't they just hire a
consultant who knows how to dothat already? And you know, part
of that was, I was young andnaive, but I think there is some
truth to that, and in a sense,that's what you're saying,
(41:49):
right? As the manager, thesenior engineer, the subject
matter expert, you kind of serveas internal consultants, right?
So the engineering team doesn'thave to go through the failures
that that you did when you wereyounger, they could just turn to
you and say, What do you thinkabout this, John and and you can
guide them in the right way.
Yeah, all right. Well, John,thank you so much for being on
(42:13):
the show. It is so nice to seeyou and have a chance to catch
up with you again. Anything elsethat we should go over, that
that we haven't talked aboutyet?
John Martell (42:26):
I can't think of anything. I think it's been
really nice to talk with you.
Catch up. And thanks for havingme on.
Aaron Moncur (42:32):
All right, and how can people get in touch with
you? LinkedIn,
John Martell (42:36):
I'm on LinkedIn, linkedin.com/in/john-martel, in
slash. John dash, Martellperfect,
Aaron Moncur (42:43):
and we'll put a link to that in the show notes
as well. Great John. Thank youso much again for being on the
show.
John Martell (42:50):
Thanks for having me.
Aaron Moncur (42:52):
I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of pipeline design and
engineering. If you liked whatyou heard today, please share
the episode to learn how yourteam can leverage our team's
expertise developing advancedmanufacturing processes,
automated machines and customfixtures, complemented with
product design and R D services.
Visit us at Team pipeline.us. Tojoin a vibrant community of
(43:16):
engineers online. Visit thewave. Dot, engineer, thank you
for listening. You.
There was a need at the new company, and I, I
said, I'm I can do that. I'mready for this adventure. It
just kind of took off fromthere. You
Aaron Moncur (00:24):
John, hello and welcome to the being an engineer
podcast today. We're so excitedto be speaking with guest John
Martel, a seasoned mechanicalengineer with over 14 years of
hands on experience spanningaerospace, medical devices,
automation and geospatial DroneServices. He currently serves as
(00:45):
Director of data management atArrow velocity, and brings a
unique blend of technicalleadership, creativity and
passion for both engineering andmusic. And this is a special
treat for me, because John is aformer co worker of mine. We
worked together at pipeline formany years, and he is just a
(01:06):
wonderful person, a supertalented engineer, and it's just
a pleasure and a delight to getto catch up with him and talk
again and share some of theinsights and engineering wisdom
that he has picked up over theyears. So John, thank you so
much for being on the showtoday.
John Martell (01:22):
Yeah, thanks, Aaron. I appreciate you inviting
me on the podcast. So
Unknown (01:27):
thinking back to when your engineering career first
started, or before maybe whatwas it that made you decide to
become an engineer? Well,obligatory, used to play with
Legos all the time as a kidstory here, but partially true.
My grandpa was a mechanic.
John Martell (01:47):
I wanted to be a mechanic. Because of that. I was
really interested in cars, but Italked with my mom about that,
and my grandpa about it, andthey said, well, instead of
working on cars like as amechanic, why don't you maybe
design the cars one day? And sothat was in my mind. And then I
took shop class, and I likedmath and science. I took other
(02:10):
engineering classes, weldingclasses, and it just kind of
built on itself to the pointwhere, yeah, that's what makes
sense. Because I think I'm goodat it and I like it, I will
apply. I initially applied andgot into ASU as aerospace, but I
transitioned to mechanicalbecause I thought it would be
broader, based on my experience,I thought it would be a better
(02:33):
fit. And, yeah, that's, that'swhere it started.
Aaron Moncur (02:38):
Do you ever think back and wish, darn, I wish I
stayed with aerospace. Or areyou pretty happy that you went
the mechanical route?
John Martell (02:45):
I think I was pretty happy with mechanical.
Yeah. I don't regret not stayingin aerospace. It's something
that I think of like, oh yeah, Istarted with that instead of
Darn I should have,
Aaron Moncur (02:59):
I should have stayed with it. I know what you
mean. I actually started inmanufacturing engineering, and
it's funny to think backsometimes that that was my
initial major, and then theUniversity where I went, they
actually ended that programwhile I was there. And so
mechanical was kind of like thedefault other option. So I went
(03:20):
into mechanical and I'm reallyglad that I have now, like you
said, it's, it's a more broadmajor. I think it's kind of the
Swiss Army knife of engineeringdisciplines, yep. All right,
well, let's talk a little bitabout the time when you were at
pipeline. So this was, it wasabout, what, six years something
(03:40):
like that, that you were there,and you eventually were a
project lead, leading projects,and we did a lot of fixtures.
And towards the end of yourstay, we were getting more and
more into automation, and youled many of those projects. Can
you think of one of thoseprojects that taught you
(04:01):
something pivotable. Pivotable.
That's not a word pivotal aboutthe design or process
optimization.
John Martell (04:11):
We did a lot of work for and we were working. I
was helping, one comes to mind.
I was working on a project withNoah Burke, who you had in a
podcast recently, and MarkBlakey, who are both great,
(04:33):
awesome guys to work with, andsome others, as well as part of
this project. But thissometimes, at least the projects
that we were working on, thescale of the products varies so
much, and getting into this onethat we were trying to solve,
(04:54):
there was. This needle. We weretrying to make this needle,
trying to place the end of thisdevice, the distal end, in a
certain location. And somethingthat, what I learned, and what
was clear at that point wassometimes you just, you think
(05:19):
you have an idea a good way todo something, but it you just
have to go back to the drawingboard several, several times.
Even though you think you mighthave a good solution, you test
it out and it's no it that's notthe right way to do it.
Sometimes you hit a home runright away. And I would say
pivotal is just having thepatience and reminder. Just have
(05:42):
patience when you are trying todo the right design, make sure
that you're doing it correctlyin the right way. And things
take more time sometimes thanyou think they will, I feel
Aaron Moncur (06:01):
like we were, we were learning that lesson
frequently. It always takes moretime that what we do at
Pipeline. It's such a doubleedged sword. It's super fun
because we're always doingsomething new and interesting,
but at the same time it's alwaysnew, and which means we're
always climbing that ladder ofinvention and figuring out, all
(06:21):
right, how do we do this? No onehas ever done it before, so we
need to figure it out. So a lotof fun, but some challenges when
it comes to getting things donein the amount of time that we
quoted. Let's see you are youhave this knack for designing
(06:41):
mechanisms. And I was always so,so impressed with the mechanisms
that you came up with, right?
There's these, these mechanicallinkages, or things like that,
that facilitated motion in acertain way, or performed some
kind of work really cleverly,without having to resort to
electronics or things like that.
(07:04):
What's your process fordesigning a new mechanism?
John Martell (07:09):
Well, first and foremost, the inputs and
criteria requirements are vitalto the success of a mechanism
doing what it needs to do forthe end customer. So that's
that's first and foremost. Youhave to have those written down,
either in a requirementsdocument, which is optimal, or
(07:31):
even just for your own. Noteslike this. Needs to do this, and
it needs to do it like this,even additional notes for
yourself, for myself. I write sothat I can think of and when
things come to mind, make notelike I would like it to be easy
to turn or some things thatmight not necessarily be on the
(07:54):
requirements document, but itaids in some some conceptual
ideation there. I can alsovisualize well, so I try to
envision the required motionwhen I hear of the problem. So I
think about what this mechanism,mechanism needs to do. So
(08:14):
that's, I guess that's part ofmy knack. Maybe is able. I'm
able to have it in my head, butthen I need to get down in CAD
and we need to make it. But sogoing from the inputs, the next
step for me, I usually, and mostalways, actually use pen and
(08:38):
paper like a notebook, a designnotebook, and just make a bunch
of sketches, sketches about likethis is here. This Is there
things that move, if you have adevice or an item that you're
trying to interface with, yourbrain just just thinks
(09:01):
differently and worksdifferently through pen and
paper. It's crazy. You you canthink of something maybe even
just going into CAD would begood. But if you go to pen and
paper, start and it's justpractice like more and more
drawing makes better and bettersketches. So I've been sketching
(09:21):
and drawing my whole life, so Iguess, I guess some people
haven't been doing that, but Ihighly suggest to start right
away practice sketching. Sosketch what you think you need
to do might not even be thewhole mechanism, but then
(09:41):
sometimes just sitting on it andgetting distracted coming back
to it that that's helped me alot, too. So you do some
sketching. I often do a Googlesearch, an image search of.
Something that comes to mind,make notes, a lot of back and
(10:04):
forth. This is just likeiteration of chicken scratch
sketches, sometimes CAD, butusually sketches. And after I
have maybe something reasonablein a sketch pad sketchbook, I go
to SolidWorks, let's say, andmake a movable sketch. That's
(10:27):
usually the thing I do next isin SolidWorks, you can make a
sketch and have it static withdimensions, and it gets black
because it's all constrained.
That's good. I've I make that afirst position and or in an end
position, initial and finalposition with the same length of
linkages, then I make a newsketch. I feel like I'm rambling
(10:51):
a little
Aaron Moncur (10:53):
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(11:39):
keep going. This is great. Ilike that you talk about the
Google search as well. Yeah,that's an underutilized tool,
right? We always try and createthings like from scratch all by
ourselves, but there are alreadyso many ideas out there. And you
might not use an exact idea thatyou find out there, but it
serves as good inspiration. Ithink there was, think I recall
(12:00):
there was some website that youwould reference on occasion as
well, right, like 101mechanisms, or something like
that. 501
John Martell (12:08):
mechanical movements? Yes, yes, you can
actually go to five or 507sorry, 507 movements.com. Has
many that are animated. Now,actually, I use that a lot. I
told other engineers about thatsite a lot. There's also a book
(12:30):
that I have as well calledmechanisms and mechanical what I
have it over here? Yeah, that'sit, mechanisms and mechanical
devices, if you're looking forreally good inspiration, you
could look at that book as well
Aaron Moncur (12:45):
mechanisms and mechanical devices and 507
mechanisms online, right? 507movements.com movements, 507
movements.com great referencesources. Oh, yes,
John Martell (12:59):
nice, because a lot of times you don't need to
reinvent the wheel. You justneed to change the size,
reinvent the spokes interface,well, attaches to the car.
Aaron Moncur (13:11):
Yeah, yeah. I find that to be one of the challenges
that engineers have to overcomeis we, we love we're engineers
because we love creating newthings. We love designing new
things, but we don't always needto design something new. In
fact, oftentimes I feel like theengineering goals and the
(13:32):
commercial goals can be at oddswith one another, because the
engineer wants to designsomething even better, right?
That's perfect and new andinteresting, but the commercial
goals for any engineeringorganization are to do it as
fast as you can for as littlemoney as you can, and oftentimes
that just means findingsomething that already works,
and maybe, like you said,retrofitting it a little bit so
(13:55):
it interfaces with with yourapplication. So after
John Martell (13:58):
you do the research, like I was discussing,
I would go into SolidWorks andstart making that movable
sketch. What I was trying todescribe was that you make a
mechanism in a start positionand an end position, and then
you close that sketch and thenmake a second sketch that has
(14:19):
the mechanism parts constrainedby the length and the pivot,
like we're saying if we'remaking a four bar mechanism,
let's say you have this the fourbars the same length and the
same pivot points as that mainsketch, but you don't constrain
it so that it cannot move. Youmake it so that it can move. And
(14:40):
you can actually see the motionin that sketch referencing that
first sketch. And then if youneed to change it a little bit,
you can modify the first sketch,close out, remove the second
sketch, not remove it. Move itagain, and you can see it move
around and see if it'll do whatyou do. You want it to do. I've
(15:02):
also used Excel and referenceequations for mechanisms to to
ensure that I'm using the rightmechanism or right linkage,
let's say for the rightapplication. Yeah.
Aaron Moncur (15:17):
Yeah. That's great. Thank you for walking us
through that process, I thinkthat sketches in SolidWorks are
probably also underutilized, andthey could be super powerful.
There's a trick that I used touse back in the day when I was
doing a lot of CAD where I wouldcreate a free body diagram in a
sketch, and I would apply theforces, and I would use lengths
(15:41):
to designate the force. The wordis escaping me, the the force
values, the magnitude of theforce, not just the magnitude
the vectors, also. That's why itwas helpful doing it in a
sketch. And then as I changed,you know, one of the loads or
one of the force vectors,everything would update
(16:03):
automatically, right? Because itwas in a sketch, and I had
different constraints andequations that were driving
everything, and that was areally helpful way to utilize
sketches to visualize how asystem, a free body diagram,
changes as you manipulatedifferent values. Yep,
John Martell (16:20):
That's definitely helpful.
Aaron Moncur (16:22):
All right. Well, at Arrow velocity, you're now
managing data related to dronegeospatial services. How did you
make that leap going frombecause you were like, I mean,
you did a little bit of softwareas well, but you were primarily
mechanical in the work thatyou've done previously and now
(16:43):
your your data and software,which is very different than
what you were doing before. Howdid you make that that jump, and
what have been some of thelearning curves or surprises,
things that you didn't expect?
How is that all going?
John Martell (16:59):
Well? I did a lot of Excel work and code like
macros for Excel and forSolidWorks. And I also helped
implement PDM SolidWorks, PDM atpipeline, and also before that,
my company, prior to that. Andso I was kind of in the realm of
(17:24):
that as some specialty of my myexperience, I would say, and
there was a need at the newcompany and a shift. And I I
said, I'm I can do that. I'mready for this adventure, and it
just kind of took off fromthere. I was already recognized
(17:49):
as someone to be able, someoneable to lead that department or
portion of the company. And soit Yeah. What we do now is we
analyze and take the data fromdrones captured data captured
using drones, LiDAR, MSI, and westore the data. We analyze the
(18:17):
point clouds, and we track theprogress of the the projects,
and interface with the customersas needed, delivering the
products to them, if
Aaron Moncur (18:31):
you can talk about it, and no problem if you can't.
What? What are your drones usedfor? And what's the goal? The
objective of acquiring andanalyzing all of this data.
Yeah,
John Martell (18:44):
I can, yeah, certainly talk about that. So
one use case is in Mississippi,there are a lot of dams and
watersheds, so we help them togather data. Instead of a
surveyor with a stick and asensor a laser. We use our
drones to scan the profile ofthe dam to make sure that it is
(19:07):
not compromised in any way,especially after a big storm.
And so they get a lot more datausing the drone scanning, and
it's safer for the operators,because they don't have to be
near the alligators and theother wildlife in and around
that area that's not normallytraversed by human traffic. So
(19:30):
it's a win win in that case, wealso scan farms for the farmers,
especially who have irrigationfields for rice and soybeans,
and they need a an optimal placeto place poly pipe, which is
(19:53):
method of irrigation that apolymer pipe, a thin pipe that
you. It could be 12 inches indiameter, 15 inches diameter
that they poke holes into, andthe water escapes on one or
either or both sides of thatpipe that's placed on the field
at at some point in the in thefarming process, and we they
(20:18):
need to have it in a goodlocation in order to properly
water the whole field. And so wegather the elevation data for
the fields, and we help torecommend a certain path for
that to go. So we give them thatinformation or report and
different geo spatial files thatthey can use in the CSV that
(20:42):
they can plug into their theirtractor if they need to and
follow that path.
Aaron Moncur (20:47):
Very cool. I did not know that you could plug a
CSV into a tractor. This is newsto me. So do you sell these as
like kits that the purchasingorganization then uses? Or you
do all this as a service.
John Martell (21:02):
It's a service that we take our drones down to
the location that is needed andscan and scan the area, and we
bring the data back in house,and we then provide the
information at the end of ouranalysis to the farmer or the
(21:25):
the entity that would like it,and then they can use it as they
need to, to make decisions andand, yeah, improve their
process. Very
Aaron Moncur (21:37):
cool, very cool.
All right. Well, let me take avery short break here and share
with all the listeners that thebeing an engineer podcast is
brought to you by pipelinedesign and engineering, where we
don't design pipelines, but wedo help companies develop
advanced manufacturingprocesses, automated machines
and custom fixtures,complemented with product design
and R and D services. Learn moreat Team pipeline.us The podcast
(22:00):
is also sponsored by the wave,an online platform of free
tools, education and communityfor engineers. Learn more at the
wave. Dot engineer, and we'respeaking with John Martel today.
So John, you've you've managedboth younger junior engineers as
well as senior engineers. Whatdo you have any advice for
(22:23):
engineers who are interested inmaking that transition from an
individual contributor toengineering leadership?
John Martell (22:33):
Yeah, I think it is important and good to look at
what your superiors and previoussuperiors do and don't do that
you like and don't like, andthink about the lessons learned
that you've witnessed as you'regoing about your current role
(22:56):
and thinking about Your pastexperience, and if you're
currently transitioning to amanager type role, it's good to
find a way to get past theimposter syndrome that you may
have because I went through thatyou have to ensure to remind
(23:16):
yourself that there's a reasonwhy you're getting This new
role, and at the same timestaying humble and knowing that
you don't know everything, andyou're you're still in in the
middle of a transition, so justgive yourself a break.
Aaron Moncur (23:32):
Wonderful advice, really, really solid advice.
What were some things that youdid to overcome imposter
syndrome?
John Martell (23:41):
Some of it was a fake it till you make it kind of
thing.
Aaron Moncur (23:45):
I love the honesty. I've certainly been
there. You have
John Martell (23:48):
to believe that there's a reason, like I said,
the reason why you are where youare and people listen to you for
a reason. That's why I said,stay humble, because people will
listen to you. Listen to whatyou say, and if you get too
(24:09):
egotistical or or cocky orwhatever, and you're not
remembering why someone mighthave put you in the new role,
then your words, what you say,and don't say, it'll be taken,
could be taken out of context,and there's a whole, whole mess
of repercussions. Just, yeah,you have to be extra careful,
(24:36):
but you don't have to be toocareful. I think it's it's good
just to be, be yourself.
Aaron Moncur (24:46):
Yeah, good advice, be yourself. Let's talk about
some of the tools that you'vebuilt over the years, not just
physical tools, but but softwaretools as well. You mentioned
doing a lot with Excel macros. Iknow you've got. Some experience
with Python, of course, lots ofSolidWorks experience. Thinking
back, can you, can you identifymaybe one of your favorite tools
(25:10):
that you've ever built? It couldbe hardware as well, up to you
and what what was special orunique about it for you.
John Martell (25:16):
Thinking back, doing all the work for we had a
lot of exports that we needed todo for them, a huge drawing
package. It's not something thatSolidWorks has built in. So I
(25:36):
made a macro to automaticallyexport all of the the common
files, like PDF, step, etc, andplace it in a format that they
requested. So I made a macrothat had several steps to it,
(25:56):
and it was kind of elaborate,but it worked, and I was pretty
proud of making that and helpingto save time with the Save
pipeline time and get theproducts to them faster than if
we were to do every one of themmanually.
Aaron Moncur (26:15):
I remember this.
It was for smaller dryingpackages, not that big a deal.
But like you said, for largerdrawing packages, where maybe
there are, you know, a few 100parts in there, it would take a
long time, because they wantednot just, you know, a dump of
all the files, but a veryspecific folder structure,
(26:35):
folders within nested folders.
Some of them were zippedfolders, and others were just
loose files, but a very specificconfiguration of all of this.
And when you have a big assemblyand you're having to create
right the PDFs, the stepexports, the native files all in
different sub folders and zippedfolders in a very specific
(26:58):
structure. I It would, it wouldtake, easily, days for some of
these larger assemblies, andthen with your macro, I think it
was literally like, I mean, thehuman time required was a few
minutes something like that. Soit was, it was an incredible
time saving something that wasreally cool and heavily utilized
(27:19):
by the whole team. All right, alot of the podcast listeners,
not all of them, but a lot ofthem, are younger in their
careers, maybe the first fiveyears or so. What are a couple
of things that you wish, thatyou wish you knew when you were
a young engineer, that you knownow? I
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John Martell (28:24):
Yeah, part of it might be just new to the
corporate or business world,like out of college, basically
into the job world. Part of itmight be engineering related,
but what I wish I would haveknown was how fast it goes by
(28:49):
and not to take your health oractive nature for granted,
because you could get stuck in,stuck behind a computer screen
or in front of a computerscreen, I guess, if you want to
look at the front of it forlonger than you might want to,
(29:11):
if you don't take breaks andmove around, and it can take a
toll if you're just sitting Infront of computer it's not just
engineering, but just ingeneral, it's good to take
breaks and go walk aroundmultiple times a day. Go talk to
(29:33):
people, be social, be active andand don't forget to play, even
in your your elderly 20s and30s, yeah,
Aaron Moncur (29:49):
yeah. Recently, I work from well right now I John
and I were just talking aboutthis before we started
recording. I. I have ACL surgerya couple weeks ago, so I'm not
extremely mobile at the moment,and I'm used to being pretty,
pretty active, working outseveral times a week, and doing
(30:11):
jiu jitsu several times a week,and and I can't really do any of
those things, certainly not theJiu Jitsu, but I can do a little
bit of weight lifting. So whatI've been doing lately, I can't
really do a full like workout,but I've been setting up the
home gym just so I can go inthere, like every hour or two
and just do like, a quick set offour different exercises. And it
(30:35):
takes, like, literally, threeminutes to do this, and it's
great, you know? It gets theblood pumping, and it gets my
body moving a little bit. And Idon't have to spend the full
time doing a workout. I can'treally do a full workout in my
current condition anyway, but Iget in there for, you know,
three minutes at a time, two orthree times a day, and it really
(30:55):
helps break things up. And Ialways feel more like energized
and some mental clarity aftermoving my body a bit. Then, just
like you said, if you letyourself fall into that trap of
sitting for hours and hours onend, it takes its toll. It
happens quickly.
John Martell (31:15):
Yeah, and I liked how at some point you had gotten
that rowing machine at thepipeline. And you would go in
there, I would go in theresometimes and just get on there
and start moving my body and,
Aaron Moncur (31:30):
yeah, what is one common way that you have seen
engineering teams fail?
John Martell (31:38):
Uh, well, bureaucracy and not having a the
same sense of shared purpose.
I've seen that and there,there's been toxic. I just want
to bring up at this time, theculture that you have created,
starting at I think maybe beforeI was there, but when I was
(32:01):
there, the core values that youinstated, I know you, I think
you instated those while I wasthere, and those are, treat our
customers well, treat our teammembers better. Govern my
productivity, not bureaucracy,suffocate chaos, promote order,
prevent surprises, and also themission statement to promote joy
(32:21):
in the lives of our teammembers. I think those are ways
that you ensure that engineeringteams work together well and do
not have a failing morale,especially. And I just wanted to
thank you for introducing thatto me, because I've tried to
(32:41):
replicate that in my current andand pass position at workhorse.
I was previously a workhorsearrow, and then now at air
velocity, trying to, I think theone of the good books that you
introduced me to was culturecode. And I have tried to
remember the the points thatthey tried, that he tried to
(33:05):
make in there, vulnerability,safety, and then purpose. And so
I try to, in little ways, hereand there, tried to replicate
that. So I appreciate thatthat's that's one thing, one way
that engineerings are better offis because of the communication
(33:25):
and morale and the team, senseof team that is brought out from
those tactics.
Aaron Moncur (33:36):
Thank you, John.
It means, means a lot to hearyou say that. Thank you very
much. I I have thought to myselfon more than one occasion,
because I think what we do atPipeline, it's, it's kind of a
tough business. Yeah, we talkedbefore about how everything we
do is custom, and so we'realways inventing something, and
there's inherent risk whenyou're inventing something
(33:57):
right, things never quite goexactly how you expect them to
go. And I think that one of thereasons we are still alive and
thriving as a company is becauseof the the culture of the team.
Everyone. They work together,they support each other, they
like each other, they help eachother. There's, there aren't
(34:20):
really any, like, siloeddepartments where they're
throwing things over the walland saying, That's not my
problem. That's, that's yourproblem. It's just not like
that. Yeah, and there's, there'svery little like policy or
bureaucracy. Everyone just workstogether to be productive. And I
really think that's one of thereasons that we're we're still
(34:43):
around after 15 years. Soanyway, thank you for saying
that.
John Martell (34:48):
I think it is, and the way that you have customer
base that is return customerbase, I think is also that, or
because of what and how you'veyou. Treated them and how you
interact. It's a personalitygame at that point too. Not a
game, but it's, it's how, howyou treated them as well.
Aaron Moncur (35:10):
The only way that we get anything done is with and
through people. At the end ofthe day, it's, it's all about
relationships with people.
John Martell (35:17):
Sometimes the biggest one is no surprises.
Yeah, yep,
Aaron Moncur (35:22):
that's right, yeah. Gotta prevent those
surprises. Are Michael Hadley,who you know very well. John
likes to say that bad newsdoesn't age well, so yep, get it
out there early. Yeah. Allright. You've been a musician
for for quite a while. In fact,you know, I just remember this
right now as we were talking.
Okay, so all of you listeners,you are in the presence of of
(35:46):
greatness right now, which is,I'm sure, already clear, but the
intro to the being an engineerpodcast, and the outro, for that
matter, was created custom bynone, none other than, uh, John
Martel here, so among many otherpieces of of musical genius. But
that one was, yeah, it was. Itwas generated all by John. So
(36:09):
thank you for the beginning andending of over 280 episodes at
this point. Sure.
John Martell (36:16):
Yeah, no problem.
It was. It's fun. It's fun.
That's what it is. How
Aaron Moncur (36:22):
does musical creativity influence the way
that you think about engineeringproblems? Or does it Are they
completely separate?
John Martell (36:32):
I'm not. I'm not sure that influence is the word
that I would use, but I wouldsee that they're similar created
creativity outlet, I think,slightly different parts of
their brain. Maybe, maybe a lotof engineers are musical in some
(36:53):
instrument, I think, but I cancorrelate the creativity and
diversity of music and musicalstyles with the diversity and
diversity of solutions to aproblem, let's say so. I think
if you're musical, you canvisualize you're not visualizing
(37:15):
music, but it's similar how tohow you can visualize an object,
you can kind of think about thesound or the melody. I would
say, there's a there's acorrelation for me there. I
would say,
Aaron Moncur (37:32):
yeah, yeah. I don't have the musical talents
that you have, for sure, but Ihave always really enjoyed
music. And there was a time whenI started to learn the guitar,
and I didn't get very far, to behonest. I probably got about
seven or eight months into it,and I could do, you know, really
(37:53):
basic things, but it was so fun.
It was so satisfying justhearing the notes and strumming
the guitar playing along with asong in the background. And I
think there there is somethingto that about just how the brain
works. And music unlocksthoughts that you might not have
had otherwise. It unlockscreativity that you might not
(38:14):
have had otherwise. I've
John Martell (38:18):
always listened to varying genres while doing CAD
or while brainstorming. I thinkthe way that my brain works, and
maybe it's a common thing, is Ithink a part of my brain talking
about this music in this way. Ithink part of my brain needs
that distraction or something tolatch onto in order for the part
(38:41):
of my brain that's doing CADfunctionally, to be efficient or
to be guided in some way it'shard to explain. I thought about
that in my first job when I wasdoing CAD work back then, and I
was doing listening to thisreally complex music, thinking
about, how can I almostmultitask, if you will, in this
(39:04):
way. But it's not, it's, I mean,it's obvious you're listening,
is it's passive, but I thinkpart of your brain just gets a
little bit of fuel, orrelaxation, or something,
something, somebodypsychological, all
Aaron Moncur (39:21):
right. Well, let's see just, I think, a couple more
questions, and we'll wrap thingsup here. What is one thing that
you have done or observed toaccelerate the speed of
engineering?
John Martell (39:33):
I think one thing that comes to mind immediately
is something we already talkedabout, macros, scripts, code,
automation improves the speed ofwork immensely, especially for
the mundane tasks or things thatyou just have to do a bunch of
clicks the same way every time,or even maybe a little bit
different each time. But thosetypes of things, automating the
(39:57):
clicks, automating the input,help in. Immensely, and that's a
lot of what I've helped tomanage and help implement. In my
current position, too, is to toimplement code Python scripts
for automatic PowerPointcreation, for instance, from
(40:20):
from data. So in a pipeline, Imade several Excel macros, cell
works macros, those really help.
The other thing too is justsomething besides what we
already talked about, justgetting feedback early. It's
kind of like failing early,getting feedback and talking to
someone else early on, so youdon't go off in a rabbit hole
(40:42):
dead end, helps immensely. So Igreatly recommend that to teams
to just have regular meetings todiscuss or just ask and ask to
help. If you're a manager, justask, how's it going? Do you need
anything? Or do you haveanything that I can review? And
usually the other person ishappy to oblige and go over the
(41:07):
problem at hand, and you cansay, yeah, that looks good. Or,
actually, maybe you can trythis, because when I did XYZ,
this was better. What do youthink? Yeah, yeah. Having,
Aaron Moncur (41:25):
I remember when I was a lot younger, and hearing
about how companies wouldstruggle with various problems,
I would always think to myself,why don't they just hire a
consultant who knows how to dothat already? And you know, part
of that was, I was young andnaive, but I think there is some
truth to that, and in a sense,that's what you're saying,
(41:49):
right? As the manager, thesenior engineer, the subject
matter expert, you kind of serveas internal consultants, right?
So the engineering team doesn'thave to go through the failures
that that you did when you wereyounger, they could just turn to
you and say, What do you thinkabout this, John and and you can
guide them in the right way.
Yeah, all right. Well, John,thank you so much for being on
(42:13):
the show. It is so nice to seeyou and have a chance to catch
up with you again. Anything elsethat we should go over, that
that we haven't talked aboutyet?
John Martell (42:26):
I can't think of anything. I think it's been
really nice to talk with you.
Catch up. And thanks for havingme on.
Aaron Moncur (42:32):
All right, and how can people get in touch with
you? LinkedIn,
John Martell (42:36):
I'm on LinkedIn, linkedin.com/in/john-martel, in
slash. John dash, Martellperfect,
Aaron Moncur (42:43):
and we'll put a link to that in the show notes
as well. Great John. Thank youso much again for being on the
show.
John Martell (42:50):
Thanks for having me.
Aaron Moncur (42:52):
I'm Aaron Moncur, founder of pipeline design and
engineering. If you liked whatyou heard today, please share
the episode to learn how yourteam can leverage our team's
expertise developing advancedmanufacturing processes,
automated machines and customfixtures, complemented with
product design and R D services.
Visit us at Team pipeline.us. Tojoin a vibrant community of
(43:16):
engineers online. Visit thewave. Dot, engineer, thank you
for listening. You.
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