POF Catcher Connectors

2021-2023

Part of the team that designed the novel 2 channel fibre optic transceiver for Isolectra to be used in new smart home developments.

Main Roles

Lead Mechanical Designer

Responsible for all aspects of the mechanical design of the product and project peripherals.

What I did

Connector Design.
EMI Shield Design.
FOT Leadframe Design.
Packaging Design.

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Connector Design

Housing and alignment clip design, tooling & protoyping.

I was responsible for all aspects of the connector design. I worked with the client's external mechanical designer to come up with the concept for the housing. The design then had to be adapted for the soft-tooled, injection moulded prototypes. I then worked with our external manufacturer to develop the hard tooling. The parts were also ran through extensive FEA to ensure that the housing could be within the operating parameters set out by the client. I was also in charge of the material selection for the part, I had to ensure that our choice would conform to all regulations associated with the application and that there would be no supply chain issues with purchasing the material later down the line. This particular project had several substantial design changes due to changing project requirements late in the design process. I was able to handle all changes by rapidly prototyping and evaluating the new concepts. This led to minimal impact on the overall project timeline.

EMI Shield Design

Shield design,rapid prototyping & tooling.

Worked with the clients external mechanical designer to come up with the initial concept for the prototype shield. There were several issues with these shields due to lower quality of the prototypes that I was able to fix in-house when the first articles to insure first articles were delivered on time. I was the solely responsible for the design of the production version of the shields. I took the lessons learned from the prototypes and created a far more robust design. I then worked with external manufacturers to ensure that the parts could be stamped and that they could be made to our specification and within budget.

FOT Leadframe Design

Leadframe design, component placement, heat transfer analysis & tooling.

I was heavily involved in the design of the Tx FOT leadframes. Existing parts had an overheating problem causing them to fail during operation. Using heat transfer and CFD analysis I was able to optimise the leadframe design and component layout to provide maximum heat dissipation.

Packaging Design

Component, cardboard packaging & shipping prodcedures.

I designed the packaging tube for the assembled connectors. All cardboard packaging for parts was also designed along with the definition of the packaging & shipping procedures and the all labelling specifications.