Where Science Meets Industry
Menu
We had two excellent interns this past summer (summer 2023)! Undergraduates Edmond Tan (RIT: Computer Engineering Technology) and Josh Rosenberg (RIT: Mechanical Engineering) joined our team in May for 3-month research engineering internships at our company.
Both Edmond and Josh worked on a mixture DOE funded SBIR research and future SkuTek products. During their short time with us, they were excellent co-workers and had a significant impact on our company and to our DOE-funded research!
Edmond’s Work
Edmond, whose interned at us previously, is a senior at the Rochester Institute of Technology where he studies Computer Engineering Technology. He was given a wide variety of engineering responsibilities. Despite his formal status as an intern, Edmond assumed the responsibilities of an engineering associate and worked on cross-disciplinary tasks across our company.
Web-Based Monitoring System for SkuTek Data Management Hardware.
His first task was to develop web-based software to monitor the computers we are developing under DOE SBIR grant “Data Management for High Speed, Distributed Data Acquisition”. Prior to this summer. Edmond had no experience with web design. However, he was a rapid learner and built a web-based application in Python and JavaScript which will run on our future Collector Node and Data Transfer Node computers. Edmond developed a critical pillar of our future data management product line for big data physics experiments – allowing users to monitor data collection rates, hardware resources, and telemetry from Skutek Hardware during their experiments.
LED Display for Cosmic Ray Detection
Edmond worked with our engineering team this summer to develop a cosmic ray detection demo. Edmond programmed a micro-controller to turn on LEDs which displayed the hit-pattern of Cosmic rays detected by our FemtoDAQ Kingfisher digitizer.
Edmond ventured into 3D CAD design and designed a case and mounting system to shine LEDs through Lichtenberg sculptures. He 3D printed his case, assembled it, and we used it for a live cosmic ray display during conferences!
Arduino Thermal Control System for 3D Printing
Edmond developed a temperature control system for our 3D printing enclosure. We utilize 3D printers a lot in our work, but noticed that temperature variations inside our enclosure decreased quality during long prints. To solve this problem, Edmond designed an arduino based thermal control system system which monitored temperature and turned on fans as needed to maintain a steady-state temperature inside the enclosure. He designed this system as “safe to fail” so the system would default to maximum cooling in the event of hardware failure.
Previous Work (in 2022)
During Edmond’s previous 2022 summer internship, one of his notable accomplishments was soldering together a high-density surface mount Silicon PhotoMultiplier (SiPM) arrays. This was no easy task. The SiPM chips were 3x3mm with pad contacts underneath. Edmond aligned all chips carefully and soldered them in an Infrared heating oven.
Edmond’s SiPM board arrays worked great! We used these boards to stress test our Chickadee-32 digitizer which was being upgraded via an SBIR partnership with Argonne National Laboratory (ANL).
Edmond’s boards and testbed were used to iron out bugs in our digitizer firmware before final validation at a site visit to ANL in April 2023.
Josh’s Work
Josh is a 4th year Mechanical Engineering student at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Like Edmond, he had a lot of responsibilities during his 3 months with us.
Light Tight Enclosure for SiPM Detectors
Josh’s first task was the development and assembly of another SiPM array with a new larger scintillating block. The electronics were fully operational when Josh joined us, however we needed an enclosure and reliable assembly before they could distributed to customers.
Josh programmed a CNC machine to drill precise holes in a block of BC402 scintillating plastic which emits visible light when exposed to gamma rays. The holes were then threaded and used to mount the plastic a fraction of a millimeter above the SiPMs. He then designed a light-tight 3D printed enclosure which was bolted to the board – blocking out all visible and ultraviolet light to allow for a clean signal.
These detectors are now a commercial SkuTek product and will be used at the University of Rochester to teach students about radiation detection!
Designing production panels and enclosures.
Josh was tasked with designing new panels for our upgraded FemtoDAQ Kingfisher digitizer. Although we had design files for previous iterations of panels, they lacked references to other components, didn’t specify materials, and the software didn’t support custom artwork. We needed a complete redesign from scratch in modern integrated 3D CAD software.
Josh developed a sketch the panel based of the electrical schematics and vendor datasheets. When dimensions were not specified, he manually measured them using calipers and built 3D models of the entire digitizer including the enclosure, screws, and electronics.
To check his work, Josh taught himself how to program our CNC machine. He routed out balsa wood panel prototypes complete with minuscule holes used for our screws and tiny LEDs. This was used to identify and correct several errors!
Finally it was time to order the panels for production. Josh learned how to work with a local sheet metal manufacturer and placed a small-scale manufacturing run. The final result in sheet metal came out gorgeous and fit perfectly! His panel has been rolled out for all future Kingfisher sales.
Enclosure and Panels for our new FemtoDAQ Vireo Digitizer
To support the ongoing development of our future FemtoDAQ Vireo Digitizer, Josh developed a 3D printed enclosure to house the electronics. He designed his 3D printed panels in such a way that they can be easily manufactured in sheet metal for production units using extruded aluminum casing. We’re repurposing Josh’s design files for aluminum sheet metal manufacturing.
Josh spent a lot of time getting 3D printing text to print legibly – good enough that we’re using this case to demo the unit to customers at conferences!
The UDP Cannnon / Network Saturator
Josh’s final task was his biggest and was for our DOE SBIR grant “Data Management for High Speed, Distributed Data Acquisition”.
Josh was tasked with developing an enclosure for our first hardware product produced from this grant. The UDP Cannon is a high performance network saturation tool meant to stress-test network hardware. We needed an enclosed system containing 4 circuit boards and a single-board computer for control. Furthermore, due to the size limitations of our 3D printer this had to be a dense configuration. Each board has about 1inch of clearance from each other.
He also accounted for thermals of each board – developing a pull fan configuration that ventilates the enclosure via a grate in the back for compatibility with rack-mounted servers.
The final case can be manufactured in less than a week and is rigid, easy to modify, and compact!
