Rod Ormston Email & Phone Number

Hythe, England, United Kingdom

Hythe, Hants.

In December 2018, with On-Systems making staff redundant, I reverted to self-employment; see On-Systems section below for more details.Although permanently employed for many years up to 2018, I had retained self-employment in order to serve a long-standing customer.Until 2006, most of the self-employed work carried out was for Alfatronix, more information further down the list.Work for Alfatronix whilst self-employed included 12-24V step-up products to 240W (part of the DD Series 12-24V UP) and a new design for the DDi24-24 series of DC-DC converters, allowing the range to be extended to 240W and increasing the switching frequency so that the magnetic components were smaller and more easily fitted by the production staff.I carried all electronic design including prototype transformer winding, PCB layout with a licensed copy of Altium Designer, and EMC compliance. I also assisted Alfatronix at the test house where required, this work continuing until 2006.

Silchester

With On-Systems, I returned to hands-on power design and the use of Altium PCB software. We used the very latest components and materials to ensure that the products led the market and as such my experience with On-Systems extended into SiC and GaN devices.I designed switch mode power converters to the required safety standards and EMC compliance including design and winding of prototype transformers, PCB design using Altium Designer and full testing. The emphasis is very much on high efficiency combined with small size and low noise.A key electronic design was the 'Pebble', a 100W laptop power supply that meets the highest defence EMC standards (DEF-STAN Land Service Class A/B) WITHOUT a huge box of filters. Just the 4" x 2" (approx.) PSU. At the Elektra awards in December 2018, Pebble won the Power System Product of the Year category. A huge achievement!Other work included:- Major involvement, along with other team members, with a high power PFC unit.- A specialist LED lighting supply. Originally designed by a consultant, I took this over and replaced wound components, re-designed the PCB and moved the design into production,Staff were made redundant at Silchester in December 2018, but I continued to work for On-Systems on a contract basis until 2020. The firm has now moved to Letchworth, Hertfordshire.

Havant

Power Engineer until 2012. The technical lead on various power supply projects. These products were designed by external vendors, but had to comply with our exacting standards.Duties included writing of specs. and test procedures, supervising staff carrying out the testing and liaising with the vendor on any issues found during testing. Whilst testing was in progress, I would dismantle a selection of the batch of power supplies for internal inspection, providing feedback to the vendor on any assembly or regulatory compliance concerns.Past experience before Xyratex included electrical installation and therefore I had some involvement with the ClusterStor/StratoStor side of the business where the delivered product includes high power input feeds. This ranged from answering electrical enquiries from product architects to qualification of Power Distribution Units.Past product design experience included the commercial aspects, and more recent work for Seagate Systems had involved close collaboration with a Procurement Director in selecting parts for sub-circuits that should ultimately be common across all product designs.The firm was Xyratex until taken over by Seagate in 2014. This post ended with redundancy in April 2016, subsequent to which, Seagate terminated their presence at Havant.

Ryde, Isle Of Wight

On this contract position, I started by writing a Qualification Test Procedure for an aircraft in-flight entertainment power supply and later on was involved in debugging/fault finding.

Poole, Dorset

At Alfatronix, I designed products for on-site manufacture, as well as helping with customer enquiries and supporting production.In particular, Alfatronix was keen to produce a switch mode successor to a very robust conventional AC-DC power supply that they used to make. The AD series resulted and on these I carried out all electronic design including prototype transformer winding, PCB layout, and compliance with safety standards.I left Alfatronix as an employee in December 2001, but continued to work for them on a consultancy basis, see the Ormitech entry.

Southampton, United Kingdom

Bowman Power Systems Ltd. were developing an electrical generator based upon a high speed micro-turbine.At the start, I carried out all sorts of electronic work, but was sent on a Protel [later Altium Designer] training course in 1997 and from then onwards produced PCB layouts for parts of the system, as well having a hand in some of the circuit designs.When I arrived, Bowman were about to take over a run-down building and I often carried out the required electrical work in the evenings, in this way covering several office and workshop areas as we expanded through the building.