Dan Read Email & Phone Number

Morrisville, North Carolina, United States

Mechanical design for liquid handling within the medical industry, working in Tecan's Labwerx department. Providing engineering expertise to transform customer requirements into custom products. (More details to come as time progresses.)

Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina Area

Provided Mechanical Engineering expertise for new product development, primarily digital monitoring units for transformers. Enclosure design for electronics, drawing upon existing knowledge of electrical components and PCB assemblies. Enclosures had to meet high level Ingress Protection standards. Continued use of Creo 4. Developed Microsoft Visio skills. My R&D team works as a “skunk works” type of organization, causing increased refinement in my internet research skills.

Fuquay-Varina, Nc

• Product Engineer at John Deere Turf Care, designing and implementing solutions for golf cutting units and Walk-Behind Greens Mowers (WBGM). Projects involved castings, sheet metal, rotomolded plastics, welding, machining, 3D printing, and understanding material selection and heat treatment. Frequent use of GD&T skills. Extensive work with suppliers. Personal involvement in prototype validation. • Redesigned handlebar tubes for WBGM by adding a partial deformation merged with a fully deformed, flattened tube end. This resulted in complex 3D shapes that needed realistic modeling for meaningful FEA. To create this shape, I taught myself how to create swept blends in Creo within one day and refined my understanding of finer details in a few more days. • Met challenge of redesigning rotomolded plastic grass catcher and metal cast supports with limited data available for critical aspects. This required networking through different functional teams to gain knowledge of not only positional requirements and failure modes, but how those requirements change depending on application and scenarios.• Aggressively learned SAP Netweaver to increase design quality, speed, and communication. In one instance, I needed to use this software to compare a massive amount of data between new and old BOM structures. I not only found the best tool within Netweaver to accomplish this accurately without manually comparing every part number, but also determined the meaning of valuable program outputs by pure logical deduction. Furthermore, those program outputs were beyond the knowledge of experienced coworker experts.• Learned John Deere’s Engineering Change Management (ECM), a product implementation process involving multiple tasks from many departments with gate driven logic. I aggressively pursued learning this, as I knew greater knowledge would allow me to optimize speed by determining what tasks can be done in parallel and what paths different types of parts take.

Cary, Nc / Clayton, Nc / Sanford, Nc

Engineer I (November 2009 to July 2016)• Worked with Platform and Hydraulic Installation teams for Caterpillar Wheel Loaders. Sheet metal design and hose and tube routing software (within Creo / Pro/e) used extensively for hydraulic routing design. GD&T used for every drawing. In conjunction with Pro/Mechanism, hose motion simulation software used to study motion behavior of hoses in dynamic applications. Design choices enhanced by knowledge gained from working with hydraulic filters, pumps, motors and valves. First choice by Medium Wheel Loader personnel for high priority and/or complex projects. Increased focus on becoming knowledgeable of Engineering Standards used by the company. • Teamcenter Visual Mockup used to ensure accurate design. Strong initiative to engage members of other system teams to ensure successful design. Received excellent feedback for ability to work remotely, especially with Compact Wheel Loaders that were built in England, a 5 hr time zone difference from my office. This required strong communication and organizational skills.Project Engineer (March 2003 to January 2009)• Worked with Caterpillar Chassis and Hydraulic Teams, maintaining involvement in hydraulic projects while working within the Chassis Team. Was first choice within Chassis Team to design enhancements and resolve technically challenging issues for Small Wheel Loaders. • Pro/Sheetmetal used on a consistent basis to support chassis and hydraulic designs. GD&T used for every drawing. Experience gained on first job after college from working with the experts at the sheet metal shop supplier, providing an advantage on what could and could not be done with sheet metal, thus increasing creativity. Pro/e hose and tube routing software used extensively for hose and tube routing design.• Multiple projects completed in Hydraulic Systems design using knowledge gained from working with hydraulic filters, pumps, motors and valves.

Raleigh, Nc

• Designed conduction and convection cooling systems for a variety of circuit boards used in military and industrial applications. These designs ranged from attachments to the individual circuit board to enclosures that included fans, power supplies, wiring, etc.• Most projects involved sheet metal and machined design, using AutoCad 12 and 14.• Most products were custom designed but had to meet specific industry standards. In order to achieve both within one product, a high level of creativity was required. • Much experience gained in expeditiously procuring parts for designs, as well as researching the technical aspects of new components.• Worked with all levels of company personnel.