NEIEP’s Corner 6 The ELEVATOR CONSTRUCTOR NEIEP’s Corner At NEIEP, we are proud to have a team of talented individuals who work together to bring high-quality training to IUEC members. This month, we shine the spotlight on Dan Morrissey, NEIEP’s resident electronics, firmware, and lab design engineer, who plays a central role in developing many hands-on learning experiences. Dan joined our team in 2014 and quickly fit in with his exceptional technical skills and passion for software design. Dan’s attention to detail is unmatched, and he ensures that every aspect of the electronics and firmware design process is thoroughly thought through, from the back-end architecture to the user experience. He works closely with the SMEs and writers on the development team to ensure that the results meet our instructional needs and exceed expectations. Dan studied engineering at Southeastern Massachusetts University (now UMassDartmouth) and started working on an MBA but eventually decided to follow his passion for electronics. He started his career at Barry Industries in Attleboro, MA, building chip resistors for seven years. Dan soon realized this work wasn’t so exciting, so he left the resistors behind for a job in the plastics industry designing and building control systems for large machinery. As he explains, this job opened his eyes to new design possibilities: “I learned about PLCs and motor control and how to get all these things to work. And part of the cool thing about that job was you had to design it, build it, and install it.” Dan’s experience in the plastics industry was a gamechanger. At the time, the engineer did it all, so Dan was directly involved in many exciting projects. He built the lines that produced some of the earliest microwaveable cups and was introduced to flexible circuitry while working for Poly-Flex Circuits. There, he collaborated with a company called Nellcor to build the first pulse oximeter (the device you put on your finger to measure blood oxygen). The biggest payoff for Dan from this job was an introduction to the software that he still uses for designing circuit boards. Despite being in the early days of the technology, when the software was still in DOS, Dan says the fundamentals remain the same to this day. After Poly-Flex Circuits, Dan became a toy builder for a private firm called Design Lab in Providence, RI. He explains: “We were downtown – we worked with Hasbro heavily, but we also worked with all the toy companies. We were essentially a think tank for toys.” Dan’s role was electronics design, and he was responsible for some of the mainstream toys of the late 1990s (remember Sing & Snore Ernie?). Later in his career, Dan contracted with many companies to design software for industrial processes. He wrote software for intelligent operation of cranes used in the metal treating industry, one of the first uses of design intelligence in manufacturing. His software enabled cranes to pick up and move products to specified points in the metal treating process and had broader applications in the world of automation, as he had this system running at IBM, Pratt & Whitney, and many places around the world. Dan also designed electronics and software for American Biophysics, specifically on their product the Mosquito Magnet. continued on page 12 Development Spotlight: The “Design Guy,” Dan Morrissey David Morgan Executive Director
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