Alexander W.

Mechanical Engineer @Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

I have taken on technical lead roles across multiple projects, each involving its own needs for component testing, experiment design, failure analysis, reporting requirements, and participation as well as contributions to design reviews and engineering gates at regular intervals. I am principally responsible for the design and readiness for production of a number of components as well the integration of these components into larger systems. I work with exotic materials, including energetic, flat flex circuits, semiconductors, and complex mechanisms and assemblies. I am often finding solutions to producibility issues, designing test series to prove out component design as well as meet critical design, performance, and safety requirements flowed down from the top level system. I have taken part in large scale planning exercises to flush out the scope of development projects spanning nearly a decade. In my roles as a technical lead I help lead small groups of engineers to develop and mature the design of components as well as working to deliver a design that is both manufacturable and of high enough quality to ensure it meets all requirements. Over my first year at Lawrence Livermore I spent most of my time on fixture design, design of experiments, safety/failure analysis, as well as some software development and mechatronics work. This work entailed developing creative solutions to design problems, planning and executing large scale testing efforts, and evaluation of designs through FEA. More recently my work has involved the optimization of an older design in our portfolio. I have been employing the use of magnetostatic analysis and statistical 3d tolerance analysis software to maximize performance and producibility of our components. The software development was in the form of using LabView to create a program for a novel system to control the operation of a number of different instruments as well as process the data real time.