In my previous, pre student life, I was the Production Design Manager for a world leader in the design and manufacture of custom built screenprint and curing systems. Having started  as a junior electrician, when the company consisted of six full time employees, my enthusiasm and ability enabled me to turn my hand to anything as the company grew. As a result I gained more and more by way of skills and experience and established myself as a key employee. During my time with them I was involved in every major phase of the company's development helping to design, build, deliver and install equipment as well as purchase the supplies to build them with.

I was uniquely equipped for this task, my time with the company gave me a wide range of skills from CNC programming of the machine tools, welding, spraying and fitting. This enabled me to tailor every detail of the designs to make them manufacturable within the ablilty of the production staff and equipment.

Answerable only to the owner/directors I was eventually responsible for the day to day running of the Design department as well as being expected to oversee the production facility as a whole, as part of the managment team.

During my time with them I was regularly tasked with organising the on-site requirements for the company's prescence at exhibitions both in the UK and throughout Europe. This entailed liasing with contractors, helping to design and construct the stand, design and build of display units, organising delivery of equipment (Getting the maximum volume of products into the smallest amount of truck) and going to the exhibition hall and building the stand. After a weeks 'rest' working on the stand,meeting customers and agents, I would be responsible for the succesfull repatriation of every last nut and bolt!

Below are some shots of my previous work. These machines were either designed and built by me or my team, I am proud of them and they are in use producing components for companies involved in the aerospace, automotive, mobile phone and medical fields, amongst others.  Goto the links page and look at the Natgraph website. I was responsible for the majority of the large equipment you can find there.

Top Left:The outlet wing from a conveyorised dryer. Tracking the belt used to mean moving the motor to re-tension the chain, a simple durailier system took care of this.

Top Right:As PLC became popular with customers wanting greater control and flexibility, a free standing, remote head unit was designed to stand on a matching pedestal next to the printer, giving them instant feedback and adjustment to the dryer settings.

Bottom:This panoramic shot is of part of a Glass Dryer that cures the black border around car windscreens and was a £500k machine fitted into an automated production line. It has hydraulically operated hoods, the insides are built in stainless steel, It runs at a constant 200 degrees but the outside is cool to the touch and was never assembled fully until on site in Belgium. The entire line was 10 modules (20 metres long) and fitted together perfectly!

Below: Placement poster produced for the University callback day based on my time as a project engineer at Tyco