Instrument Development Engineer
38 Westview Dr., Hampton, VA 23666
Tel:(757) 865-8073, FAX:(757) 865-4447, E-Mail:lai@mindspring.com
| B.S. (Manufacturing Engineering) | 1992 | California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, California |
| A.S. (Laser Electro-Optics) | 1987 | Pasadena City College, Pasadena, California |
| A.S. (Engineering Technology) | 1981 | East Los Angeles City College, Los Angeles, California |
Project Engineer/Senior Manufacturing Development Engineer specializing in product development of biomedical and high-tech electro-optical products manufacturing. Fiberoptic sensor manufacturing. Proficient with AutoCAD Rev.14 Mechanical Desktop 3.0, MathCad Rev. 4.0, various desktop publishing and HTML software. Special skills include prototype machining and set up. Strong technical documentation, electronic publishing and communication skills.
| 1997-Present | Engineer, Lockheed Martin Engineering Services, m/s 371, NASA Larc,
Hampton, Virginia Senior Manufacturing Development Engineer responsible for operation of fiber drawing equipment and development of tooling and process engineering for acrylic and polyimide coated optical fiber for sensor development. Design tooling for optics to create fiber optic sensors on-the-fly (during the drawing of optical fiber) on drawing tower. Designed and manage fabrication of custom fixtures for electro-optical systems and laser systems. Responsible for implementation of all facility and equipment changes required to improve fiber optic sensor manufacturing operations. Develop safe operating procedures (SOP) for all processes. Designed fiber laser components. |
| 1992-1996 | Instrument Engineer, Science and Technology Corporation, Hampton, Virginia Support multiple branch efforts at NASA Larc to develop, electro-optical hardware, experiments and tooling to complete various high-tech laser based instrumentation. Develop a laser damage facility to test optical materials and create a new ISO 9000 Laser Induced Damage Threshold (LIDT) testing standard. Utilizing an ND: YAG, custom built tunable Ti:Sapphire, Ho:Tm:Er:YLF lasers to create LIDT baseline for existing experimental laser systems. Created tooling and set up experiments to evaluate performance of high efficiency, narrow-band pass Fabry-Perot optical filter for LIDAR applications. Recovered an effort to lase a custom Cr:LiSAF diode pumped monolithic cavity laser. Developed an all ceramic gimbal mirror mount using fused silica for low thermal drift laser resonator applications. All custom designed and detailed fabrication drawings were created utilizing AutoCAD software. Created method to interferometrically measure the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE), of composite optical tables. Submitted patent application for a tunable PZT mirror for CO2 laser applications. Assisted with diagnosing the thermal lensing condition on the LASE flight instrument, IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, Vol. 31, No. 5, May 1995. |
| 1987-1992 | Senior Manufacturing Development Engineer, Newport Corporation, Fountain
Valley, California Developed manufacturing processes for high-technology laser electro-optic instruments. Responsible for developing manufacturing process tooling and testing methods to produce the SuperCavity Optical Spectrum Analyzer (OSA) non-confocal scanning Fabry Perot interferometer instrument. Responsibilities also included tooling, training course development, course presentation, and team management. |
| 1984-Present | Optical Tools Manufacturing Consulting, MET Engineering, Santa Barbara,
California Designed and developed prototype tooling and automatic production equipment for high-tech product manufacturing. Supervised customer project engineers involved with implementing prototypes. Designs for tooling, fixtures, and automatic equipment lead to product commercialization. Under the direction of Dr. Tom Chyba created modifications to convert a stationary Cassegranian telescope donated by NASA Langley into a portable LIDAR receiver. This effort involved designing custom support framing, inclination worm drive transmission, receiver optical breadboard, and managing fabrication and assembly of LIDAR, for Hampton University’s Research Center of Optical Physics,(RCOP). The LIDAR is used as a teaching tool for atmospheric science research applications. Under the direction of Dr. Donald Lyons also of RCOP, developed specifications and designed an automatic Bragg Reflection Wavemeter Fixture, (Patent #5,552,882), developed to fabricate and calibrate transverse holographic Bragg fiber optic sensors. Assisted with solesource documentation and procurement of technical instrumentation for research professors and postdocs. Hosted machine design seminars utilizings AutoCad Lite computer aided drafting software for graduate students involved with developing experiments, assisting them with the creation of prototypes toward completion of thesis. Partnering with David Shriner(consultant), configured, procured and installed a small network computer system for a Harper & Company(local Oyster Point company), consisting of a single Dell server and three Gateway workstations running Novell NetWare and Windows NT operating system. Developed Polymount (low cost) and Ceramount (Fused Silica), the first non-metallic optical component product line developed primarily for the laser research community. Created and marketed through a Nikon Distributor, the first production quality control device for Intraocular lens inspection, (Optical Positioner, O.P. System). Designs for tooling, fixtures, and automatic equipment which lead to product commercialization available upon request. All designs are created utilizing AutoCAD rev. 14 software. |
| 1983-1987 | Senior Design Engineer, Bosch Engineering, Goleta, California Designed static and dynamic substrate tooling for custom Ultra High Vacuum Deposition (UHV) systems. |
| 1982-1983 | Senior Design Engineer, Surgidev Corp., Goleta, California Lead engineering team responsible for developing custom tooling and equipment to produce Intraocular Lenses (IOL). Activities included designing lenses, tooling, equipment, processes, process training and documentation. |
| 1981-1982 | R&D Design Engineer, Iolab Corp (J&J subsidiary)., San Dimas,
California Develop processes, packaging, lenses, and loop fixtures for IOL manufacturing. |
| 1981-1982 | Drafting Consultant, Collins Machinery, Monterey Park, California Detailed fabrication and isometric assembly drawings for manufacturing of pipe threading machinery. |
| 1979-1981 | Designer, Systems Engineering, Los Angeles, California Developed detailed fabrication drawings to build custom tooling and equipment used for high volume manufacturing of ceramic capacitors. |
| 1978-1979 | Peer Counselor, East Los Angeles City College, Monterey Park, California Worked in Extended Opportunity Program & Services (EOPS) department providing tutoring in math, physics, peer and academic counseling for disadvantaged students. |
| 1. | Barnes, N.P., M.E. Thomas, G.J. Koch, and W.D. Marsh, Atmospheric Thermal Lensing in Laser Resonators, IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, Vol.31, No.5, May 1995. |
| 2. | Wise, S.A., M.E. Thomas, and M.W. Hooker, Correlation of Laser Damage Resistance to Mechanical and Thermal Properties, Presented at Annual Meeting of the American Ceramic Society, April 24, 1994. |
| 3. | Hooker, M.W., M.E. Thomas, S.A. Wise, and N.D. Tappan, A Ruggedness Evaluation of Procedures for Damage Threshold Testing Optical Materials, NASA Technical Memorandum, 4639, February 1995. |
| 4. | Sanford, P.S., and M.E. Thomas, Ultra-high Efficiency, Very Narrow Passband, Tunable Optical Filter, Applied Optics. 8325, Vol.33, No.36, 20 December 1994. |
Patents:
Awards:
Special Skills:
Return to MET Engineering Main Page
This page and its contents copyright © 1996 MET Engineering. All Rights
Reserved.
This page was last updated on March 18, 1999.