Behind the Design: Randall Gray Bock’s Mission to Not Become Bored

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In July 2023, Randall Gray Bock and a team of scientists sat on the carpeted floor of a hotel room in Tasiilaq, Greenland, assembling forty 3D seismic sensors with 200 kilograms worth of lithium batteries that had arrived via a transatlantic cargo ship.

Once the sensors were ready to go, they climbed into a helicopter and flew 20 minutes towards the Helheim glacier. Their goal was to quantify the movements of the glacier in three dimensions as a function of time. In that respect, Randall was a unique team member.

“I didn’t know anything about glaciers,” he laughs. “I didn’t know anything about seismic sensors.”

But he knew how to use the sensors, he knew how to fly the drone for the 3D mapping, and his mechanic skills came in handy when the door of their dingy rental van spontaneously fell off the vehicle on their very first day. The main reason Randall found himself in Greenland, however, was SOLIDWORKS.

Randall was an engineer before he even knew what the word meant. He remembers taking devices apart and putting them back together again during his childhood, and stacking all manners of things in the doctor’s office. It was his grandmother who first introduced him to the career, simply by naming it.

“You should be an engineer,” Randall remembers her telling him.

His parents were supportive, and soon enough he was studying agricultural engineering at Penn State University, the agricultural aspect inspired by his country upbringing. Randall remembers descending into the basement of the electrical engineering building in the early 1980s to use the giant CAD stations.

“I was always looking for solutions, I was always interested in new things,” he explains, “and, you know, I was on a mission to not become bored.”

Randall started using AutoCAD, and after graduating from his bachelors worked as an engineer for various companies before returning to Penn State as a researcher. At first, he worked in the biomechanics department, where his team developed the treadmill for NASA’s space shuttle program.

Randall preferred working on more earthly projects, however, and so eventually moved back to engineering in agriculture. By then he was teaching, and he quickly became known as the CAD guru on campus. So, it’s funny that, around 1995, it was one of his students who introduced him to SOLIDWORKS.

“I was like, this is amazing!” Randall remembers, “I instantly figured out what I had to do to tool up on SOLIDWORKS, and the rest is history.”

The “history” is actually a series of very cool events. He began teaching SOLIDWORKS classes at Penn State and accumulated over 1,500 CSWAs. In 2012 he started his own company: Bock Industries, which specializes in devices for humane livestock euthanasia. Beginning in 2014, he had his students design, test, and 3D print flying model rockets with SOLIDWORKS in 15 weeks. And the flying part was mandatory.

The project won him first place in Stratasys’s Learning Center of Excellence 3D printing competition – and, clearly, in his student’s hearts as well. On ratemyprofessor.com, 100% of students said they would take his class again.

His most transformational moment by far, however, was the Greenland expedition. About ten years ago, the department head in Engineering Design at Penn State contacted him and asked a single question:

“Are you a SOLIDWORKS guru?”

Randall’s answer was, of course, yes. And that was that.

Despite having no background in glaciology or seismology, he joined a team of scientists as the mechanical design lead to develop a network of sensors to track the movements of glaciers. They used SOLIDWORKS to create a first version, and then a second version. Randall was invited to join them on the expedition to Greenland in 2021, but then it was canceled because of Covid, which gave them an extra year and a half to perfect everything. They were finally able to go in July 2023.

This brings us back to the colorful carpeting of a hotel room in Tasiilaq. The team assembled the sensors, which were white and blue in honor of Randall’s alma mater, and then loaded the devices and themselves into the helicopter. They flew to various destinations along the glacier, hovering long enough to drill a hole into the ice to screw a sensor and flag into place. They repeated the motion for all 40 sensors over the course of two weeks. With the drone, they mapped the area in 3D.

“It was a life-changing experience,” Randall says. He gets a bit emotional as he recalls the heart-stopping feeling of standing at the top of a glorious mountain, of flying past 1,000-foot-tall walls of ice. The sun never set, and the team broke up their work with naps. All the places they went to were only reachable by helicopter, and were so remote that Randall is certain he was the first – and perhaps only person – who would ever step on that particular patch of grass or ice.

“It’s just, so much. It’s a different world. It’s so much beauty.”

Randall retired from teaching in July, but is still running Bock Industries – of course, with SOLIDWORKS.

“You know, without SOLIDWORKS, none of this would have been possible,” he concludes. “It’s really quite amazing.”

Margherita Bassi

Margherita Bassi

Margherita is a freelance writer and international storyteller. In addition to the SOLIDWORKS Blog, her work has been featured in publications including Smithsonian Magazine, Discovery Magazine, BBC Travel, Live Science, Italy Magazine, The Brussels Times, and more.