Starlink UT
During my time on Starlink User Terminal, I worked with a small team of Engineers for developing the Gen3 router and the fully automated factory supporting it. The goal was to have plastic pellets and SMT components show up on one side and have a router show up on the other every 3 seconds.
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I was responsible for the ultrasonic weld station, laser part marking, high-volume piece part design, and part carrier development. The weld station had industry first solutions that saved the company millions of dollars per year in manufacturing costs. It was a fully custom solution involving high stiffness structure design/analysis, mechanism design, and process development for piece part welding.​
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Skills: NX, Teamcenter, Ansys, GD&T, Injection Molding, Compression Molding, Product Design, Mechanisms Design
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See portfolio presentation of this project here:
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Ultrasonic Weld Station Design
WIP
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Responsible for the design and qualification of the ultrasonic weld station for the product, operated at a 3.6s cycle time
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Designed a welded frame for the ultrasonic welders with 5 axes of adjustability to sub thou precision capable of withstanding a 6000N load with less than 20μm of deflection in NX, performed structural FEA iteration in Femap and ANSYS
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Proposed and designed a cam lifting mechanism and assembly pallet for the weld process in NX that reduced tolerance stackups, complexity, and cycle time for all other end effectors and assembly stations on the production line
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Modeled the cam system dynamics in Python to optimize the profile for cycle time and stress in components, used vision tracking of a prototype cam assembly to verify accuracy and tune the model, saved months of iteration on physical parts
Process Development
WIP
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Responsible for testing and validation of the weld process to balance cosmetics on the part, leak resistance, and cycle time
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Implemented a novel solution to resonant behavior that was damaging the product, saving millions of dollars per year
Piece Part Design
WIP
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Performed modal analysis in ANSYS on different rib structure options for the housing to minimize resonance during welding
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Designed a silicone rubber compression molded seal for the RJ45 ports on the product that prevented dust and water ingress
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Developed a technique to make 3D-printed molds and cast silicone to rapidly iterate and test complex seal shapes in house
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Optimized seal for install experience and lowest cost in high volume production, cutting costs in half vs competing designs