Atlanta Gear Works expands engineering team with its first Georgia Tech graduate

Dawsonville-based gearbox repair and manufacture company Atlanta Gear Works (AGW) has recently expanded its engineering team by hiring its first Georgia Tech graduate, Corinna Draghi. 

According to a press release by AGW, Draghi is not only the first Georgia Tech graduate the company has added to its team, but she is also the company’s first woman engineer and the first with a degree in aerospace engineering. 

After graduation, Draghi’s first full-time job was as a mechanical engineer, working with the inventor of the directly driven centrifugal shot-blast wheel, the release said. 

“Her responsibilities include 2D- and 3D-mechanical design and project management of custom-designed heavy industrial shot-blasting machines used for finishing structural rebar, propane tanks, heavy earth-moving equipment components and other steel and aluminum components requiring a specific finish,” the release said. 

The release added that, in Draghi’s previous job, she also wrote reference and maintenance manuals, cost analyses and multi-million dollar quotes. 

“I learned a lot about hardware and grades of steel and spent a lot of time in steel mills,” Draghi said in the release. “All of that is applicable to what we do at Atlanta Gear Works.” 

Draghi’s mechanical engineering training started when she was young, according to the release, as she grew up in a house with a shop her father operated in the basement, manufacturing labeling and filling machines for chemical companies that use bottles and conveyors. 

“He built everything from memory,” Draghi said in the release. “Ironically, what I didn’t know as a child was that he was also doing gearbox repair.” 

Draghi joined the company during the pandemic, and since then she has gotten her OSHA certification and was a speaker on the Women in Manufacturing panel at the AGMA 2021 Motion and Power Technology Expo in Saint Louis in September. 

“I was impressed with her mix of hands-on experience, mechanical design and CAD capabilities,” AGW Vice President of Engineering Chris Dale said in the release. “Rarely do we find an engineer who has both gear and gearbox experience. Since we know we will have two train them, we look for someone who is willing to learn and will fit in with our family of engineers.” 

AGW designs, engineers, builds, rebuilds and repairs heavy industrial gearboxes for some of America’s leading manufacturers, the release said. 

“It also repairs other process-critical rotating equipment and continues to grow its field service division to provide extensive field machining and repair,” the release said. 

For more information about Atlanta Gear Works, go to https://atlantagear.com.