Production
Work
Frog adapters for carbon fiber wireless bows for stringed instruments,
aluminum tension knob
and titanium screw. Assisted with design to reduce weight to absolute
minimum,
with fraction of a gram improvements deemed significant.
Carbon fiber and billet aluminum ToughLink manufactured complete for
Billet
Tough Engineering
Variety of parts made from SS, aluminum, Delrin, Ultem,
and in quantities ranging from half a dozen to thousands.
Prototype
Work
Prototype
blood collection bag pan formed over
maple buck.
Functional prototypes for new medical device to prove out design prior
to investing in injection molds.
Components
for prototype pizza vending machine,
part on left is 304L heater place, approx 16" long.
Part on right is Delrin and part of door over refrigeration compartment.
Prototype billet remote control case
Custom
Tools / Tooling
Customer
molded the part at left, less the hole. ECO called for hole, but
there's an urgent need for parts before the
mold can be modified.
Intended to punch a couple thousand, over 10,000 parts have been run on
this tool.
Molded polymer part fits over brass pin for support, is
referenced by SS tube. Hole is .021 dia, supporting pin
is machined to
leave .019 post for hollow punch to fit over, supporting slug and
allowing a clean cut in the soft material.
What
follows below is work performed for various employers prior to starting
my business
Ultra
High Vacuum Welding
UHV
chambers for Thermionics and Varian
Micro Spot Welding
A
sample of ultra-fine spot welding of .0025 etched mesh to .040 SS plate.
Automated Assembly Machine
Pictured
at left
is the final product, a yarn based floss and threader to pass yarn
between the teeth. The task was to transfer a disk of 30 plastic
threaders
to the assembly table, and one at a time, cut 18" of yarn, place center
of yarn over an individual threader near the end; fold over the flap,
and ultrasonic
weld the flap closed. I jumped into this project little experience in
electronics,
programming, machine design, and having never even seen any automated
assembly machinery up close. A failure in that it never produced
product at production rates, but a success that I pulled it off at all.
Kuntz Automation from Southern California came up to quote a real
production machine and see my process.
I was praised for pulling it off, and quietly offered a job if I was
interested in relocating to Southern California.
Automatic Abrasive Blast Cabinet
This
is a semi-automated sand/bead blasting cabinet I built for cleaning ion
sources used in ultra-high vacuum systems.
Right chamber uses
aluminum oxide and cleans the sources, left chamber uses glass
bead and gives a bright finished look.
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.
Solid
Copper Range Hood
I
made this while working at Innovative Metal Fabrication,
fabricated from solid 16ga. copper, and TIG welded.
1955
Corvette Reproduction Parts
This
was my foray into my own work. 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 that was farmed 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 was reproductions good enough to fool some of the best
Corvette
experts in the country.
Fabrication
Waste
water treatment tanks for zinc chromate line, 12ga SS tanks, frame
fabricated in place.
Wind
Tunnel Model
My
metal working career started at
NASA's Ames Research Center. I began
in a work experience program through
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"). Above is a picture of
a
wind tunnel model I worked on, mounted in the 40x80 tunnel. Another
student and I skinned approx 1/4 of the
fuselage.