Engineering Expert Witness

As a design engineer with over 10 years of real world experience, I provide an unbiased perspective from an engineer’s point of view. Areas of expertise that I am able to support are: professional drawing reviews, standard engineering practices, commercial machine design, pressure vessel design, and numerous other specialized areas. To further add to my credibility I am a licensed engineer in the state of Louisiana.

Engineering/Design Contract Work

I offer a broad spectrum of services as part of my contract work ranging from simple prototypes for clients to show investors all the way through complex detailed assemblies ready for manufacturing. While I won’t discuss clients or specifics of designs, below will represent the scale of projects I’ve completed:

• Small scale physical model of prototype with accompanying 3D computer model to show investors
• General 3D pictures to be used to file patents
• Design of high pressure test vessels and pressure seals
• Design and supply machined components with required drawings for manufacturing
  • This project required integrating new components into existing equipment
• Detailed design of complete equipment from the ground up, as well as all required manufacturing and assembly drawings

Mechanical Design Engineering

Throughout my engineering career, I’ve worked on an assortment of projects with differing areas of responsibilities. While it would be impossible to create a comprehensive list, I’ve highlighted the ones that represent the diversity of projects I’ve completed.

Industrial conveyor system test machines

Throughout my career as a mechanical design engineer within Intralox’s new products department, I’ve designed a multitude of custom test machines. These machines are used to validate different belts as well as replicate some of the harsh environments our conveyors work within. Some of the different responsibilities I’ve owned include: sizing different motor/gearbox combinations required to replicate different conveyor speeds and loads across multiple sprocket diameters, sizing and designing non-traditional drive shafts (specifically long shafts that are heavily loaded), spec’ing different sensors including load-cells and encoders, designing unique machined and sheet metal components, developing equations, sensor/machine calibration, and lastly troubleshooting legacy test equipment.

Custom strain gauge using vision system

For this project, I was tasked with developing a method and device for measuring belt tension in individual plastic belt modules that could be easily moved across the width and length of an automotive assembly line belt. This created a truly difficult engineering problem to solve for multiple reasons. Some of the obstacles that needed to be solved were: measuring load in individual modules distributed throughout the conveyor, collecting data in an active assembly plant, creating minimum downtime, measuring the load in a dynamic system, and finally, producing and deploying the device.

Pressure rated vacuum flask for use in downhole inspection camera systems

While working at a startup, I worked to develop a vacuum insulated pressure vessel capable of being deployed into sulfide high environments while withstanding pressures up to 15,000 psi (103 MPa) and temperatures up to 275F (135C). The reason why a vacuum flask is needed is that electrical circuits and cameras become degraded, and eventually fail, once they reach extreme temperatures. Two of the biggest engineering problems that needed to be solved for this product were relocating the internal electrical heat created from the internal components, as well as eliminating the fragile cold weld used in normal ultrahigh vacuum vacuum flask.

Calypso Ocean Bottom Cable system (OBC)

This was the first project I worked on after graduating with my engineering degree, which is why it holds such an importance to me. Calypso was an industrial sensor array spanning many kilometers and operating at depths up to two kilometers. The system was deployed from the back of large ocean vessels, and used in the exploration of oil. My contributions on this project included: creating test plans and fixtures, design an anodic protection system, work with production to create assembly procedures, support global field testing, troubleshoot complex electro/mechanical systems using a multitude of tools and software, and numerous other task and responsibilities.

Contact Form:

If you believe I can be of service please fill out the contact form below.