Co-op #2 |
Analogic is a large (1000+ employee) corporation based in Peabody, MA which specializes in CT scanners for medical and security use. The Peabody facility houses most of their engineering, testing, and manufacturing efforts for the US. I spent time working in engineering, product testing, and manufacturing labs to help develop new products and streamline manufacturing. The samples below detail manufacturing improvements made to a new CT system and engineering efforts on the DNA replication system.
Work Sample 1 |
Automated Dispensing Jig
•Problem
–Designed jig to hold CT detector chips during thermal paste dispensing and assembly. Programmed 2 part extrusion machine to automate the system. •Goal –Thermal paste dispensing by hand was a time consuming process, new generation system has 4x the amount of chips (112). Trying to reduce assembly time. –Heat sink is mounted from the rear of the chip, making visual application impractical and imprecise with a low yield. •Solution –Jig was designed to build chips upside down, eliminating the need to hold and flip the chips –Machine was calibrated and programmed to mix the epoxy evenly and spend only 15 seconds per chip –Sheet metal guides were created to enable manual assembly for small batches to reduce waste |
Dispensing jig in CAD (above) and extruding test epoxy (below)
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Work Sample 2 |
DNA Replication Thermal Testing
•Problem
–The current system sees excessive thermal stress leading to a low production yield and high early life cycle failure rate. Components were complicated to manufacture and the quality from the supplier was dropping.
•Goals
–Samples were made that would reduce complexity, be more robust, and able to be manufactured in house.
•Solution
–Several life cycle simulation tests were designed and preformed in order to compare performance of new samples to old and to characterize the old samples for the first time. 30 samples completed testing over 6 months.
–After all of the data was compared, we were able to eliminate one mode of failure but introduced a different one. The first alternative sample failed at a 3x higher rate than the current component. A second option was tested and proved to have comparable performance but reduced the cost by over $1,000 per component.
–The current system sees excessive thermal stress leading to a low production yield and high early life cycle failure rate. Components were complicated to manufacture and the quality from the supplier was dropping.
•Goals
–Samples were made that would reduce complexity, be more robust, and able to be manufactured in house.
•Solution
–Several life cycle simulation tests were designed and preformed in order to compare performance of new samples to old and to characterize the old samples for the first time. 30 samples completed testing over 6 months.
–After all of the data was compared, we were able to eliminate one mode of failure but introduced a different one. The first alternative sample failed at a 3x higher rate than the current component. A second option was tested and proved to have comparable performance but reduced the cost by over $1,000 per component.