The Picture Gallery
Some
images showcase work done for previous employers but are included to
showcase the diversity of my skills and background..
Right click thumbnails to open in new window.
tab.
Product Design / Development
Custom Tools / Tooling
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Customer
molds the part at left, less the hole. ECO calls for hole, but |
Small Machined Parts
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Ultra High Vacuum
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UHV chambers for Thermionics and Varian |
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A sample of ultra-fine spot welding of .0025 etched mesh to .040 SS plate. |
In-house Tool and Projects
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This
is a mill table work stop I designed. I wanted something different than
anything else I'd ever seen, |
Automation
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Left and below are pictures of some automated machiney I designed and built. I jumped into machinery design with little experience in electronics, programming, machine design, and having never even seen any automated assembly machinery up close. The first machine assembled a dental product, pictured below. This is a flosser for people with dental implants, etc. |
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This is the assembly machine. The blue plastic threader was molded 30 at a time, arrayed about a hub. We called this the "spider", and with the center punched out, they were stacked on a cassette. The machine would pluck a spider off the top of the stack and transfer to the welding table where a clamp mechanism moved into place and clamped the spider to the table. Not visible here, a mechanism would pull and cut 18" of yarn, transfer it to the welding table and place the center of the yarn over a threader. The end flap of the threader was folded over the yard, and ultrasonicly welded. The table would index, and the just completed part would be cut from the hub. |
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This is the winder mechanism on the packaging machine. A completed threader/yarn would be placed on the winder, it would wind up the yarn as it rotated 90 degrees, and present the wound part to a gripper that would transfer the product into it's package. |
Not only did I design, build,
wire, and program the machine, I solved a major problem
with the welding. The threader was a mere .020 x .040, and was stepped
to half thickness
in the flap area to maintain the .020 after assembly. I discovered that
the plastic would
crystalize at the step after welding and become brittle.
Unable to find a resin that would both fill the mold and provide other
needed properties,
I redesigned the part by adding material to either side of the flap
area, forming a pocket
and offering material that would be unaffected by the welding. I made
the single cavity
insert to test this before the mold was modified.
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This is a semi-automated sand/bead blasting cabinet I built for cleaning ion sources used in ultra-high vacuum systems. The right chamber used aluminum oxide and cleaned the sources, the left chamber used glass bead and gave a much improved finish. The sources would be attached to the end of a rod and inserted into a hollow spindle that rotated, as two blast nozzles reciprocated to give full coverage. This basically duplicated an existing manual process, eliminating much tedious labor. All moving parts exposed to the interior were pressurized to prevent infiltration by abrasive. The center chamber introduced the vacuum to both blast chambers through filters. |
Pattern Work
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This
job entailed making a male casting of an existing gunstock mold, adding
a Monte Carlo comb, then casting a female pattern, which was digitized for the new mold. This is the male pattern after the comb was added. |
Solid Copper Range Hood
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I
made this while working at Innovative Metal Fabrication, for a Nevada
City resident. This was a real fun project. |
1955 Corvette Reproduction Parts
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This
was my first project in my own shop. I like to start off
simple... These shields were to suppress ignition noise in
the radio, as the Corvette's fiberglass body didn't do much in this
regard. Of course back in 1955, these were an enormous pain to
hot-rodders, and many were tossed out.
I made a run of 45 sets for Roy Bratz in Nevada City, Editor of SACE (Straight Axle Corvette Enthusiast). Facing a deadline I didn't have the time to make a spinning lathe and teach myself to spin metal, so I farmed that out. Outside of chrome work and the dummy capacitors, everything else was done myself. Shop equipment at the time was a Craftsman lathe, torch, and hand labor. Lots of hand labor. The result of hundreds of hours of work was reproductions good enough to fool some of the best Corvette experts in the country. |
Fabrication
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Light dimmer rack for Nevada City's Nevada Theater |
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Waste water treatment tanks for zinc chromate line, 12ga SS tanks, frame fabbed in place. |
Wind Tunnel Model
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I got my start in real metal working at NASA's Ames Research Center. I began in a work experience program through my high school, then moved into an AA program through DeAnza college. While I preferred working in the aircraft shop (known as the "light side"), I worked more in the fabrication shop (known as the "heavy side"). Below is a picture of a wind tunnel model I worked on. Most of my work on this model was skinning, where along with another student I skinned approx 1/4 of the fuselage (at least 1/4 of the fuselage is fiberglass). If not for NASA and the work experience program, I'd probably have been flipping burgers upon graduating. It would be impossible to overstate the impact working in this environment had upon me. |
updated
6/02/2008
