Electronic Packaging Engineer, June 1995 - Feb 1999
Worked on electronic flight equipment from initial design concept through to issuing of drawings, bills of materials and procurement.
- Detailed analysis of printed circuit boards under vibration and thermal fatigue life of components undertaken.
- Chassis designs include casting and screwed and glued box construction often involving analysis work using finite element analysis techniques (Unix based sparkstation) to verify validity of design under vibration.
- Duties included specifying board areas/space envelopes, connector configurations and construction requirements for Printed Circuit Boards and Flexi-rigids.
- Documents associated with units included mass status reports, comprising details of the centre of gravity and moments of inertia of Equipment.
- Other duties included assistance in the preparation of proposals and work breakdown structures.
Eurofighter Head Down Pilots Display, June 1997 - Feb 1999
Redesign of a Cathode Ray Tube Based Electronic Display Unit to introduce a more modern Active Matrix Liquid Crystal Display. Benefits included superior display technology and significant weight reduction. Responsibilites during the project included:
- Ruggedisation of the mounting of the display head for it to withstand the effects of vibration.
- Redesign of the chassis to eliminate the casting and replace with a screwed and glued type box construction.
- Finite Element Analysis Techniques used to assess the strength of the new chassis with shift in centre of gravity and weight change.
- Concept design included solving of thermal issues associated with cooling of display backlighting.
Next Generation Hawk Electronic Flight Computer, June 1995 - June 1997
Redesign of a Mission Data Computer to eliminate hardwiring and replace with a more modern 'flexi-rigid' interconnecting method between motherboard and the external interface connectors. Space envelope within the unit optimised to allow encorporation of new printed circuit boards. Flexi-rigid introduced to reduce manufacturing costs due to hardwiring.
- Responsible for the mechanical design of the interconnecting flexi-rigid interfaces, including specifying flexi-rigid construction requirements.
- Preliminary 'prototype' made to determine the assemblability of the design. Rapid prototyping of a cast connector housing initiated to gain quick accesss to hardware.
- Skyline of printed circuit boards critical to design as space limited and board extraction needed to be maintained.
3D Solid Modelling, Pro-Engineer release 18.0
- Use of Pro-Engineer in a concept/engineering development role, to create full 3D assemblies.
Finite Element Analysis, Nisa/Display 3.600 Family of Programs
- Run on Unix based Sparkstations, the software was used to analyse printed circuit boards and chassis equipment used for electronic flight computers and pilot display equipment.
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