Working at Canadensys, my role centered around supporting the manufacture and testing of an engineering model and flight camera builds to be delivered to a commercial client. As a smaller aerospace company, I had the opportunity to get hands-on experience working with equipment bound for space. Work was conducted in conducting mechanical and electrical tests of the cameras including qualifying the PCBs and conducting thermal and vibrational tests at partner testing locations. Work was also conducted to consolidate past manufacturing experiences and create a streamlined manufacturing and testing process while adhering to the strict qualification and regulatory rules surrounding aerospace equipment.

I also had the opportunities to conduct some R&D work in advancing the company's knowledge in optical focusing and flat field testing. This was a result of discovering inconsistencies in the company's previous testing and calibration processes and developing workarounds to facilitate more accurate cameras builds in the future. Design work was also conducted in developing a test jig platform using SolidWorks to qualify camera lens focus degradation under low vacuum environments.

Canadensys Aerospace Corporation is a space systems and advanced vehicle development company founded on the heritage and expertise that spans a number of Canada’s historic space achievements of the last three decades. The company blends their heritage with micro and nano space technology and smart, ruggedized vehicle designs to develop unique solutions for planetary, orbital and terrestrial environments based on modern, commercial business approaches to space program and mission development.

At my time at MSAM, I was contracted out to the lab's industrial partner Promation where I worked with a small group of researchers and engineers in the development of a 5-axis laser metal deposition 3D printer for aerospace applications. Unlike traditional plastic FDM printers, this 3D printer uses high-power lasers, gas-fed powder feed, rotating build plate and a 5-axis industrial robot to manufacture metal objects with minimal supports in a short amount of time.

A lot of the work I did on this project included the development of a machine vision-based data acquisition and control system in LabVIEW that was used to track layer height during production and correct for uneven layering. Other tasks included work on a laser scanning quality control system used to detect 5+ μm defects in prints, as well as working with my supervisor on improving process planning algorithms to create more efficient tool paths for the robot while not colliding with prints. This latter work resulted in the publishing and co-authorship of a research paper titled: Process planning for additive manufacturing of geometries with variable overhang angles using a robotic laser directed energy deposition system.

Multi-Scale Additive Manufacturing Lab is one of the largest research and development additive manufacturing facilities in the world, hosted at the University of Waterloo in Canada. The MSAM Lab focuses on next generation additive manufacturing processes. To this end, the lab explores novel techniques to develop advanced materials, innovative products, modeling and simulation tools, monitoring devices, closed-loop control systems, quality assurance algorithms and holistic in-situ and ex-situ characterization techniques.

During my time at Flash Forest, I had the opportunity to assist in the development of the company’s core seed pod technology. This included establishing a semi-automated manufacturing process for the company's proprietary seed pods that were previously produced by hand, as well developing a drone-mounted embedding system rapid precise planting in various soil types around the world.

In parallel to my technical projects, I helped to standardize the company's documentation by introducing a concise format for all research and design reports used by the engineering team. I also made great efforts to keep all project pages updated in the company's internal wiki for future project continuation.

Flash Forest is Canada's first automated reforestation company that uses UAV technology, aerial mapping software and ecological science to regenerate ecosystems on a global scale. The use of drone-assisted reforestation reduces tree planting times from days to a matter of hours. This will accelerate the rate of reforestation worldwide, helping to restore entire ecosystems and scale up the global quest for carbon neutrality.

At eleven-x, I was introduced to IoT devices through my work conducting hardware analysis and verification of sensors. My job was to take commercial and in-house devices and determine how they could be integrated into the company's secure software platform to offer full-scale solutions for customers. This work included monitoring device performance over the company's LoRaWAN network and assembling test jigs to simulate product performance. Additional work included development and testing of the company's new eXactpark sensors. Subsequent work included software tasks such as writing decoders using PHP Laravel to decipher device data in regular bi-weekly application releases.

Established in 2014, eleven-x is a fast-growing startup that enables small business and organizations to integrate low-power smart device solutions to optimize their profitability and efficiency. eleven-x works with multiple sectors such as cities, utilities and transportation to provide complete low power solutions that last more than 10 years with almost zero-maintenance using Canada's first and only coast-to-coast public LoRaWAN network.