MECHANICAL DESIGN ENGINEER

A versatile, hands-on mechanical design engineer with 30 years of experience in Computer Aided Design (CAD) utilizing Creo, Solidworks, Catia and ASME Y14.5M standards. Versed in the latest manufacturing techniques and experienced in managing multiple projects. Design experience includes GD&T, optics, semi-conductors, cable routing, tooling, aerospace, medical, automotive, composites, robotics, pneumatics, injection molding, plastics, electro-mechanical enclosures, sheet metal, packaging, machine and automation design.

CAD DESIGN EXPERIENCE

Pro/E - Creo: >> 50,000hrs including Pro/E 17 – Creo 8 modules: Large Assembly, Advanced Assembly, Drawing, Program, Sheet metal, Surfacing, PDM, Report, Process, Table, Pipe, Cabling, Diagram, RSD, Harness, Intralink, WindChill, Skeleton, Mechanism, Mechanica & Family Tables.

CATIA V5: > 5000 hours including: FTA, Product, Assy, Gen Shape, Part, Tubing and Cabling.

SolidWorks:> 10000 hours including general modeling, assembly, and drawing.

Analysis: ANSYS, NASTRAN, Marc/Mentat, Mechanica, CFD, Masters level FEM course at SDSU

ADDITIONAL SOFTWARE

Windchill, Intralink, PDM, Agile PLM, TeamCenter, Ignite, Enovia, SAP, UG/NX, AutoCAD, CADkey, PLC, LabView, MatLab, MS Office, MS Project, Visio, AutoCAD, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe In Design, Adobe Illustrator, natural aptitude for learning software

MASTERS LEVEL COURSEWORK

FEM, Non-Metallic Materials, Atomic Structure of Engineering Materials, Engineering Optimization, HVAC

HOBBIES

Automotive repair, home maintenance, stock options investing, real estate investing, author, speaker, karaoke, self-improvement, volunteering, mentoring, design competition, social media marketing, TED Talks

KEYWORD EXPERIENCE

Six Sigma Greenbelt, Scrum, Agile PLM, Windchill, TeamCenter, PDM, DFM, DFSS, ECO, DOD, GD&T, MRB, CRB, MRP, ERP, ISO, SAP, RoHS, CAPA, RCA, R&D, Kaizen, Poka-yoke, Kanban, Cleanroom, CNC, Lathe, VMC, FEA, ETC…

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Oshkosh Defense – Oshkosh, WI (Remote) <Contract position> 9/2022 – 1/2023

Design and manufacture of military ground vehicles utilizing Creo 8 and WindChill 12.

Senior Mechanical Design Engineer

Acted as SME for cable harness design and import geometry surfacing repair.

Designs included sheetmetal, large assy management, harness design, and import geometry

Raytheon Intelligence & Space – El Segundo, CA <Contract position> 9/2021 – 9/2022

Design and manufacture of satellite subsystems utilizing Creo 7 and WindChill 11.2.

Senior Mechanical Design Engineer

Acted as SME for cable harness design, Windchill, and import geometry surfacing repair.

Designs included Faraday cages, optics, and antenna design and packaging.

Inovio Pharmaceuticals – San Diego, CA <Contract position> 4/2021 – 7/2021

Design and manufacture of mRNA vaccine medical devices utilizing Solidworks 2019.

Senior Mechanical / Manufacturing Engineer

Cellectra 3PSP– Battery box Design, Validation, and Verification, and Drop Testing.

oOriginal battery box design had a contact spring force of 9 lbs. Target spring force was approximately 3 lbs.

oDesigned notched contact modification. Utilized machine shop relationships to wire EDM notch modification with a 3 day turn around with no expedite fees.

oDesigned compressed contact modification.

oUtilized Instron for Validation and Verification to create spring rate curves for 24 different battery box contact variations in material thickness, material, and height.

oWorked with injection molding vendor to modify parts with minimal mold changes.

Edwards Lifesciences – Irvine, CA <Contract position> 2/2020 – 11/2020

Design and manufacture of medical heart surgery equipment utilizing Creo 4 and Solidworks 2019.

Senior Mechanical / Manufacturing Engineer

SutraFix – Designed cleanroom assembly tooling for handheld medical suture device.

oDesigned 4 miniature precision tube bending fixtures

oDesigned fixture for snare tip inspection. Rapid Prototype and CNC version

oDesigned fixture for tube clocking and alignment. 3 mechanisms. RP & CNC version

oDesigned fixture to fix tube clocking and travel with fixture. Rapid Prototype.

oDesigned spool fixture to protect and store suture rails. Rapid Prototype.

oDesigned fixture to isolate motor and avoid cleanroom contamination.

oOptimized cleanroom layout to reduce assembly time.

oWorked with injection molding tooling vendor to make mold changes.

oRedesigned injection molding assembly to minimize force on ultrasonic welding joint

Alcon Laboratories – Lake Forest, CA <Contract position> 7/2019 – 11/2019

Design and manufacture of medical vision surgery equipment utilizing Creo 4

Senior Mechanical Design Engineer

Footswitch – Next Generation Phaco Vit

oDesigned gears for foot pedal mechanism and worked with vendor to fabricate

oDesigned motor mount bracket to position and mesh gear assembly using Mechanism

oDesigned overmold using surfacing and top down design

oDesigned membrane for charging coil utilizing Surface

oRedefined PCB assembly to adhere to Alcon best practices

oDesigned Lightpipe and injection molding tooling to utilize existing PCB design

oDesigned buttons and structure and injection molding tooling using top down design

Fluidics Chamber

oDesigned 3 cables to move with jack mechanism

oDesigned 3D Printed panel to assist in supporting and routing cables

Ultrasonic Module

oRedefined PCB assembly and routed cables to adhere to Alcon best practices

oUtilized Process to create assembly steps and drawing

oDesigned 2 injection molding drawings to reflect critical tolerances of primary structure

oDesigned assembly alignment tooling

Trained 6 users in Circular References, Cabling, Surfacing, Windchill & best practices.

ULTRA COMMUNICATIONS – Vista, CA <Contract position> 7/2018 – 4/2019

Design and manufacture of fiber optic communications components for harsh environment aerospace and satellite applications.

Senior Mechanical Design Engineer

Design and manufacture of electromechanical products, tooling, and assembly fixtures utilizing Solidworks and AutoCAD.

Beam Alignment DC Test Tower – Designed replacement enclosure to reduce alignment procedures and reduce clean room footprint. Cost reduction of 60% was achieved by reducing number of mirrors, alignment stages, removing actuators and shopping for new fabrication shops. Achieved an 83% footprint reduction which equated to a huge cost savings for clean room use. Part alignment and test realized a 40% reduction in setup time per part.

Fiber Optic Alignment Assembly Fixture – Designed replacement assembly fixture to align 6 fibers within one micron alignment. Previous fixture bolted assembly into place causing the assembly to warp resulting in a 60% power loss due to misalignment of fibers. Replacing screws with floating clamp design reduced warpage which minimized power loss to a maximum of 5%. Previous fixture was aluminum frame. Replacing with solid 410 stainless steel caused a 1/3 coefficient of thermal expansion and half the specific heat. Aluminum frame design warped at the micron level from the heat of the technician’s hand. Stainless steel fixture corrected this.

Light Weight Documentation Process – Lead in planning and redesigning engineering documentation process. Goal was to add agility to the documentation process by significantly reducing CAD hours required per change. Legacy drawings included multiple stages of fabrication. Drawings took weeks to revise and caused engineering to be significantly behind manufacturing. New process called for removing parts list and notes from drawing face onto a new BOM Word doc. Multiple BOM’s pointed to same drawing so bulk item changes could be made with no CAD hours required. Multiple stages of fabrication were captured using Trigger Docs created in MS Word that were specific to vendor performing the operation. CAD bottleneck was effectively diffused. Average engineering change time was reduced from 3 weeks to 1 day.

PDM Implementation – Researched, priced and made recommendations to purchase and implement PDM and accepting part time PDM Administrative duties and migration for $3995.

Assisted in reducing and optimizing cleanroom layout to streamline validation and verification.

VANDERMAAS ENTERPRISES – San Clemente, CA <Contract position> 2/2018 – 12/2018

Contract engineering for AdelWiggins. A leading provider of aerospace tubing and precision fittings.

Mechanical Design Engineer

Estimate, research and design high precision mechanical tubing and hydraulic fittings on a sales order basis. Switch priorities on the fly with an emphasis on quick turn-around and very low error drawing creation. Utilized Solidworks and Creo.

Group subject matter expert in hydraulic assy’s within 2 weeks of project launch.

Thanked by name by management for meeting unexpected demand with an 80 hour work week without sacrificing quality of work.

WEAVER ENGINEERING INC. – Lake Forest, CA <Contract position> 5/2014 – 12/2017

Design and manufacture of in-flight entertainment (IFE) systems for commercial aircraft.

Senior Project Engineer

Research, plan and design mechanical and electromechanical products and systems. Coordinate the design, documentation, and manufacture of in-flight entertainment systems (IFE). Create feasibility study of customer requirements. Generate layout and expand to viable working layout in conjunction with all Panasonic, OEM and customer specifications and requirements. Establish engineering design schedules. Adhere to all Panasonic design process/standards and align with quality standards. Maintain detailed records to establish and verify design evolution. Evaluate new and/or existing designs for cost savings implementation and ease of manufacturing. Participate in all pertinent design reviews i.e. PDR, CDR and FAI. Reverse engineer existing commercial aircraft structure using photos and partial drawings. Demonstrated knowledge of in-flight entertainment industries including system principles, thermal constraints, wiring installations, and knowledge of FAA and or JAA regulatory requirements. Utilized Creo & Pro/E Wildfire4, Pro/Cable, WindChill, MS Office, Quality Management, Design for Manufacturability, Total Quality Control and ISO 9000.

Project Engineer to retrofit Boeing 737, 747, 767, & 777 and Airbus A330

PANASONIC AVIONICS CORP. – Lake Forest, CA <Contract position> 6/2012 – 5/2014

Design and manufacture of in-flight entertainment (IFE) systems for commercial aircraft.

Senior Project Engineer

Research, plan and design mechanical and electromechanical products and systems. Coordinate the design, documentation, and manufacture of in-flight entertainment systems (IFE). Create feasibility study of customer requirements. Generate layout and expand to viable working layout in conjunction with all Panasonic, OEM and customer specifications and requirements. Establish engineering design schedules. Adhere to all Panasonic design process/standards and align with quality standards. Maintain detailed records to establish and verify design evolution. Evaluate new and/or existing designs for cost savings implementation and ease of manufacturing. Develop and recommend design enhancements that will improve quality and reduce cost. Participate in all pertinent design reviews i.e. PDR, CDR and FAI. Initiate and facilitate all internal technical reviews. Mentor peers in common practices and procedures utilized by Panasonic to ensure cohesive design environment. Demonstrated knowledge of in-flight entertainment industries including system principles, thermal constraints, wiring installations, and knowledge of FAA and or JAA regulatory requirements. Utilized CREO & Pro/E Wildfire4, Pro/Cable, WindChill, MS Office, Quality Management, Design for Manufacturability, TQC and ISO 9000.

Project Engineer for Etihad Airways, OceanAir, TransAero & RoyalDutch Video Control Center.

Project Engineer for Royal Dutch Air Video Control Center retrofit.

Coordinated with installer to reverse engineer overhead bin to improve VCC packaging

Utilized overhead bin data to standardize and easily duplicate skeleton modeling practices

Made recommendations to improve design quality by improving design check-sheets.

Created and distributed drawing table “cheat sheet” that became the department standard.

Frequently worked weekends to assist other projects by detailing drawings to meet deadlines.

Never complained even once when workload increased or priorities shifted.

CYMER INC. – San Diego, CA <Contract position> 10/2011 – 6/2012

Design and manufacture of ultra-violet laser capital equipment.

Mechanical Design Engineer

Design and manufacture of opto-mechanical subsystems and assemblies using Pro/E Wildfire4.

Lead mechanical engineer for Beam Expander Module with Dichroic Splitter

Enclosure included motorized mirror actuators and flip up targets and alignment mirrors.

Mirror mounts required to be stiffer than a 100 Hz fundamental frequency. First modes occurred between 400 Hz and 700 Hz for all mirror mounts in Beam Expander Module

Conducted analysis of true costs of integrating TeamCenter vs. WindChill. Result was a $2.8 million per year savings in projected staffing.

NORTHROP GRUMMAN CORPORATION – San Diego, CA 7/2004 – 7/2011

Design, manufacture, and integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems.

Mechanical Design Engineer

Responsible for the design, development, and documentation of electro-mechanical packaging, cabling, radome design, structures, nacelle, subsystems, and top assembly management of unmanned systems. Responsibilities include all elements of product development process, using Pro/E, Catia V5, & UG NX

Identified clocking discrepancy in D38999/24 electrical connector models. Submitted Problem Report and negotiated with Standards group to make the change. Result was a reduction in potentially hundreds of RCI’s and a projected $1.5 million / year in cost savings.

To prep for Navy OPEVAL, addressed electrical connector electromagnetic vulnerability issue by designing an electrically grounded jam nut. Won Engineering Innovation award and filed for patent.

Mentioned by name in October 23, 2008 DCMA letter of recognition for flight test work on Fire Scout radar integration for excellence in teamwork, professionalism, work ethic and can-do attitude.

Lead Mechanical Engineer for FireScout Radar Integration. Integrated a dual payload into the nose of the FireScout unmanned helicopter. Learned Pro/Surface to design new nosecone. Designed universal payload mount to support all known payload configurations and possible future configurations. Designed payload mount to optimize fundamental frequency. Successful radar integration test led to multiple contracts with the Navy, Coast Guard, Army and international.

Learned and repaired operation and calibration of Fire Scout’s main rotor mechanism in 3 hours using mechanism. Within 8 hours developed a table relating actuator positions with blade angles. Enabled software group to calibrate their tables.

Bench tested e-drawings to help reduce travel requirements to manufacturing plant in Mississippi.

Introduced the use of datum curves in flattened harness drawings to dissolve electrical connector alignment procedure. Reduced harness drawing time by 2 hours per drawing.

Designed UHF antenna mount – utilized FEA and flexible design to optimize strength and weight.

Maintained top level assembly – initially took 3 hours to open top level assembly with 38 circular references. Repaired failures and removed 20 circular references in spare time over two month period with no impact to assembly drawings. Top level assembly now opens in 30 minutes.

Redesigned landing gear to make use of Mechanism. Damper positions were known but not final landing gear positions. Utilized family tables to create multiple gear positions.

Received Outstanding Service award in June 2005 for excellence in manufacturing support for pilot build of 3000 pound payload unmanned aircraft.

Instrumental in upgrading the cable routing process. Submitted proposals for cost savings, training, and quality improvement achieved by implementing a smart routing process. Trained 6 co-workers in the use of the new process. Bench tested file structure for optimal use of cable routing networks. Maintained cable network in most congested payload compartment without allowing personal drawing commitments to slip schedule. Ultimately achieved auto-routing capability for entire aircraft.

ISE CORPORATION – San Diego, CA 9/2003 – 5/2004

Design, manufacture, and integration of Hybrid Electric Drive Systems for commercial vehicles.

Attained CARB certification for Gas-Hybrid System in November 2003. First and only commercial vehicle hybrid system to attain CARB certification.

Mechanical Design/Project Engineer

Responsible for the cost-effective design, development, and documentation of electro-mechanical packaging of 40’ city bus drive systems on a sales order basis. Responsibilities include all elements of the product development process, from womb to tomb using Pro/Engineer Wildfire 2.0.

Primarily responsible for top down design of AC Transit’s 40’ Fuel Cell Bus. Fully documented the design of four buses. Conducted Mechanica stress analyses of stress-critical components. Collaborated with bus designer and Fuel Cell designer. Project was completed under budget and ahead of schedule.

Recognized the need and successfully negotiated to bring Pro/Cable and Pro/Intralink in house. Purchased a server for $1000, contracted an installer for $800, and purchased an upgrade package from PTC for $2700. When the Intralink installer gave up and said that Intralink 3.3 was incompatible with Wildfire 2.0, I consulted with PTCuser.org online and finished the Intralink install myself. The expected cost of both of these modules was in excess of $50,000. Total cost to ISE was $4500.

Personally completed entire database migration to Intralink within one week of successful install.

Acted as part time Intralink administrator and trainer.

Conducted complete assembly restructure to prepare Gas-Hybrid Cradle for cabling. Restructure consisted of breaking over 120 circular and external references, and the creation of more than 40 subassemblies. Estimated restructure time was 160 hours; completed in less than 60 hours.

PALOMAR TECHNOLOGIES INC - Vista, CA 9/2000 – 8/2003

Design and manufacture of high precision pick and place automated manufacturing solutions.

2001 Technology Award for Laser Diode Assembly Cell by Fiber optic Product News

2001 Advanced Packaging Award for the Laser Diode Assembly Cell

Top Product of 2001 Award for the Hotrail Assembly System by Microwaves & RF

Attained ISO 9001 Certification - June 2002

Mechanical Design/Project Engineer – Custom Automation

Responsible for the cost-effective design, development, testing, and documentation of tooling and custom automated assembly solutions on a sales order basis. Responsibilities include all elements of the product development process, from idea generation through engineering support of products in the field using Pro/Engineer 2001. Project schedules were often 4 weeks from kick-off to delivery.

Utilized Skeleton and Family Table to achieve efficient top down redesign of 5000 series bonder. Managed top-level model quality with all levels of Pro/Users working on like subassemblies. Final result was that eight separate products were redesigned in roughly the same time that it took to design one. Personally responsible for capturing “modern look” by designing contoured sheet metal covers, frame, plastic cover, Faraday cage, CE compliance, adjustable bondhead mechanism, bondhead cover, and safety shut-off.

Addressed emergency need for a tooling plate design in order to attain product buy-off before end of month deadline. Designed, documented, and delivered $300 tooling plate set in 24 hours from identification of the problem to delivery to the customer. Success relied on strong trust relationships with supervisor, buyer, planner, document control, manufacturing, receiving, Quality Control, the machine shop, plating shop, as well as a streamlined file transfer protocol. Previous tooling plate designs required up to two weeks design time, two weeks to navigate the system, and four weeks machine shop time. Tooling plate exceeded expectations of customer and applications engineer.

Utilized Pro/Engineer’s capabilities (Pro/Program) to streamline custom automation tooling design. Redesign included shopping for new machine shops and collaborating on cost reduction. Result was to cut delivery times from 12 weeks to 3 days and cost reduction from $3000/ tooling set to $250.

Designed, detailed, tested and assembled Heater stage that included leveling ability with an adjustable height. Design included a clamping 5-pin mechanism that was validated with Pro/Mechanism.

Designed, detailed, tested and assembled modular heater blocks for award winning Hotrail Assembly System. Involved quick-change heater blocks, thermally optimized with Pro/Mechanica. Modular heater block design was a result of collaboration between customers, field service engineers, systems engineers, applications engineers and assembly technicians. Advantage gained from new design is the ability to retool the Hotrail for a new assembly process in less than 10 minutes. Previous retooling required 3 weeks.

Utilizing Pro/Program, improved Modular Heater Block design by reducing variability in heater blocks to a single parameter. Created work instructions so a non – Pro/user or non-engineering personnel could create a new tooling set in under 15 minutes including detailed drawings and assembly instructions. Previous tooling design, detail and assembly instructions required two months of engineering time.

Designed sheet metal enclosure to prevent copper components from oxidizing at high temperatures. Prototype became finished product with only slight modifications to ancillary components. Significantly reduced design time by obtaining solid models from vendor. Total design completed in 7 days.

SANYO ENERGY (USA) CORPORATION <Modis>– San Diego, CA 9/99 – 7/00

Mechanical Design / Project Engineer

Designed high volume injection molded parts and tooling, sheet metal, and electronics packaging of battery packs for handheld devices.

SOLAR TURBINES, INC. - San Diego, CA 4/98 – 6/99

Mechanical Installation Engineer

Responsible for Mechanical Installation Composite drawings for 12 separate midrange turbine model lines.

GENERAL ATOMICS-AERONAUTICAL SYSTEMS <Alliance>- San Diego, CA 2/97 –4/98

Mechanical Engineer

Designed and manufactured multiple model lines of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s) including sheetmetal machined parts, injection molded parts and tooling, and composites.

TOWER STRUCTURES, INC. <Aerotek>- Chula Vista, CA 6/95 – 1/97

Mechanical Designer / Drafter

Designed and manufactured communications towers. Converted concept sketches into shop drawings.

CONTINENTAL GRAPHICS. <Aerotek>– San Diego, CA 2/93 – 6/95

Aircraft Analyst

Responsible for maintenance of electrical and hydraulic drawings for Boeing 747, 757, 767 and 777.

EDUCATION

Bachelor of Science, Mechanical Engineering, San Diego State University 1997

Associate of Science, General Science, Grossmont Community College 1991

Team Management and Leadership Program, (Team 2) Landmark Worldwide 2023

Team Management and Leadership Program, (Team 1) Landmark Worldwide 2021

Introduction Leadership Program, Landmark Worldwide 2019

CERTIFICATIONS AND AWARDS

Cybersecurity Bootcamp Certification – SDSU – December 2022

Scrum Master Professional Certification – January 2021

Six Sigma Green Belt Certification – January 2021

Scrum Fundamentals Certification (SFC) – December 2019

Principal Speaker – Planet PTC Live 2011 – “The Ultimate Cable Architecture”

Caught Green Handed Award – IVD Aluminum Rotor Hub – Aerospace Now – Jan 2011

Engineering Innovation Award – EMV Grounded Jam Nut – Northrop Grumman – Dec 2010

Mentor – Poway High School – CyberPatriot III – Finalist – top 10 in the nation out of 700 schools

Mentor – Rancho Bernardo High School – Civil Engineering and Architecture Fall 2008

President – Southern California Pro/Engineer User Group – 2007 - 2012

UMS Idol - 2007– Contestant – 2nd place – assisted in raising over $15,000 for March of Dimes.

Team Lead – Cangineering 2007 – led team of 19 volunteers. Raised $4400 to purchase 7000 cans. Working main and tail rotor and working lights. Received “Best Use of Northrop Grumman Products” and “Structural Integrity”. Nominated for President’s Award: Community Service 2008.

Secret Security Clearance – April 2006 – May 2011

Instructor – Electronic Drafting – Cuyamaca College – Spring 2005

Merit prize winner – 2002 NASA / Emhart Design Contest - www.emhartcontest.com

EIT / FE Certified, July 1998

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