Expert Details
Electrical Engineering of Power & Control Systems, Processing Sensors, Servo Control, Prototyping
ID: 725308
California, USA
He knows drive electronics, control electronics and all the various actuators from optical pointing systems to electric power steering for automotive. He easily writes the transfer functions for complex systems and allocates requirements to the various components of the system under design.
He and two other team members under his direction were responsible for our company's first cryocooler drive electronics and went on to provide adaptive vibration control and high reliability numbers to this complex task. Know the various people at JPL that provided the industry with technical papers in the area of adaptive vibration control. The company that employed him is a leader in this area largely because of Expert's ability to solve this problem early and completely.
Expert has patents regarding H-Bridge Pulse Width Modulation and is considered an expert in this field. He mentored with the original inventor of the H-Bridge and has gone on to continue to advance the state of the art in converting power. He has done systems for low power magnetic suspension up to 250 Kilo Watt three phase motor controllers for flywheel energy storage. He is also expert at the issues regarding conversion from high speed motors that need fidelity at thousands of Hz.
He has a strong background in designing and developing space qualified electronics for driving all the actuators associated with spacecraft busses and payload subsystems. Control systems include optical pointing systems, reaction wheels, cryo-coolers, smooth stepping motors, cardinal stepping motors, variable reluctance motors, linear actuators, valves, squibbs, as well as magnetic suspension electronics. Expert has been the lead electrical designer on major spacecraft programs for gimbal control and deployment and other electromechanical subsystems. He has a history of simplifying this kind of hardware where changing requirements can lead to overdesign with out a good system understanding of the entire electromechanical control system.
He is the founder of a research and development effort that became a major IRAD program that reached 30 full time employees during its peak. He has simplifying concepts regarding electrical architecture that insures low risk and early earned value and in general make the design effort a pleasure and each team member grows. This has been his specialty all the way back to his senior year of college. He entered a department that specialized in spacecraft control and still works in that department almost 30 years later.
He has patents in PWM control of current in inductive loads. He understands the subtleties of the action of the bridge and successfully designs without the need for snubbers. He has written a paper in conjunction with NASA regarding power control where standardized circuits can be seialized to control higher and higher powers. The main stage is isolated and can drive 20 amps with 50nSec rise and fall times. He has developed an architecture that lets the same electronics that would actuate several 5 axis milling machines drive a ten horse three phase induction motor. He has been involved in power electronics for automotive applications for 21 years and has advanced the state of the art in high power electronics with designs that share power and minimize eddie current losses in the load all reducing the overall cost.
Has worked with a world leader of electronics used in converting wind generator power to the grid. He understands the principles needed to process power from and to energy storage such as batteries and flywheels and reaction wheels. Have worked with 250KW systems.
He has been making PWBs since 1975 where it was all two sided and a via cost a dime. Proficient at Mentor Graphics tools and especially the Expedition Version. Has learned many different tools over the years and know how to layout and design high reliability printed wiring boards. He understands the thermal and mechanical aspects of electrical design and how to use the board to solve various problems associated with high current or analog signal layout all the way to controlled impedance high frequency and PCI. He has worked with world experts in solder joint reliability and fully understand the interplay between the board and the parts on it. He works with a small group of specialists to provide rapid turn around of a complete electrical design to the finished qualified product.
Servomechanism are the heart of most of the control systems he has spent his career working. He understands the relationship between the electrical and mechanical portions of the system and easily provides the right design for the servomechanism system. He has done systems with electro-hydraulics design elements. He easily understands the implications of gearing and inertia as it is reflected to the various points of the system.
Has spent ten years designing the power and control electronics for electric power steering for automotive applications. Understands the system from the mechanical and electrical aspects as well as issues regarding the various inertias in steering systems. Knows a wealth of information about the electronic steering systems developed throughout the world in the last 20 years.
During 1998 He consulted part time for a year with U. S. Flywheel who was teamed with NASA Glenn on the development of magnetically suspended flywheels for commercial and space applications. His expertise led to many improvements and understandings and gave him a system view of mechanical energy storage.During 2000-2001 he consulted with Optimal Energy Systems in Torrance California. He went on to spend a year and a half as their Technical Fellow. During this time he developed 250 Kilo-Watt three phase power conversion electronics with four quadrant operation. His skill at using off the shelf electronics led to this company easily meeting their customer's electronics requirements at a low cost and short schedule.He was called in to help in desperation when a senior engineer suffered health problems and was unavailable to either document or finish his project. Expert took the 80 page schematic with no inter connection diagram or system diagram and easily broke it into its various elements and got something to work that even the original designer had failed on. He did this with the existing electronics with only a few easily added side circuits to solve subsystem issues in this complex let of tunable laser electronics. Some of the faults were workmanship and interment in nature and this posed no obstacle to delivering to a preset schedule.
Education
Year | Degree | Subject | Institution |
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Year: 1979 | Degree: BS | Subject: Electrical Engineering | Institution: University of New Mexico |
Work History
Years | Employer | Title | Department |
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Years: 1979 to Present | Employer: Undisclosed | Title: Staff Engineer | Department: Undisclosed |
Responsibilities:Responsible for designing motion control subsystems regarding attitude control and spacecraft deployment. Expert at motors and the electronics that drive them. Analog and Power and Sensor circuit expertise. Servo control including highly geared systems. |
Career Accomplishments
Associations / Societies |
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IEEE at various times in his career Electric Car Club of Southern California |
Awards / Recognition |
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Has numerous awards and honors over the years for accomplishments regarding design of control, power, and sensor electronics. Recovering schedule, simplifying, reducing cost have all led to awards. |
Medical / Professional |
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Interned under James F. Gregory, inventor of the PWM H Bridge in the '60s, for seven years formally. Mr. Gregory continued his mentoring role in his retirement as he continued his passion for power control electronics. |
Publications and Patents Summary |
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Has 8 patents and many more in development. Has written but not yet published a book on his experience in the aerospace industry. It is about a place where he has been able to learn and design to his heart's content for over thirty years but where no effort is ever made to truly apply what he has accomplished. Designed and patented the Spyderco SpydeRench. |
Additional Experience
Expert Witness Experience |
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When everyone in a program/company is pointing a finger at the next expertise/department and too busy respinning a design that will still not work if it is allowed to finish, he can come in and apply his relatively mature abilities in trouble shooting complex systems to get the budget and schedule and technical risk understood and fully under control. |
Training / Seminars |
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He has written a white paper and a set of lectures on electrical architecture for accomplishing an easily evolvable design with an approach that circumvents becoming obsolete. It provides the path to low development costs for new system designs. Cheaper than changing then reusing an existing design. This is accomplished by proper unit level electro/mechanical architecture of the baseline design. |
Vendor Selection |
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He is very close to all the suppliers in the aerospace electronics components and am sought after for consultation on future products by several of the vendors. Knows the senior engineers at many of the suppliers of space qualified electronics. Has extensive interfaces with several producers of commercial power silicon. |
Marketing Experience |
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He maintains much insight into the architecture of spacecraft electronics. He is also strong into transportation and electronic propulsion as it comes to play in the next decades. He has studied alternative energy for decades and entered a national design competition. Has industry insight on transportation engineering. |
Other Relevant Experience |
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Has both personal and company related patents in a broad range of disciplines and understands protecting intellectual property. He has a realistic set of advice for individual inventors who take his consultation. He has consulted for several independent inventors that resulted in contributions toward the product being developed. |
Fields of Expertise
control system, attitude control, control system design, cryogenic electronics science, electric-power conversion, electromechanical control system, electronics design engineering, feedback control system, power electronics, power engineering, printed-wiring board fabrication, servomechanism, steering system, control system engineering, pn junction diode reverse breakdown voltage, solar power satellite, Earth sensor, analog output, analog switch, Butterworth filter, linear system, multiplexer, control-system direct-current motor, control system resolution, aerospace, electronic equipment design, spacecraft control system, control system analysis, electronics research-and-development management, control loop dynamic analysis, control system performance evaluation, satellite power system, electronics nondestructive testing, backplane, electric feedback, electronics research and development, proportional integral derivative control, electronics engineering, control-system modeling, aerospace control system, advanced vehicle control system, power distribution, single event upset, silicon diode, digital control system, power, forward error correction system, electric field, satellite, avionics engineering, spacecraft, sampling circuit, motion control, microcontroller, magnetics, electronics modeling, electronics manufacturing, electromechanical control, digital signal processing, control loop, control electronics science, concurrent engineering, avionics equipment, automotive electronics science, aerospace engineering