Winston Wickham

MECHANICAL ENGINEER

Skills Overview

Winston is an experienced mechanical engineer with key competencies in product and process development, robotics and automation, calculations, analysis, material selection and general mechanical engineering. He has designed machinery to work with natural and man made products and specialises in blank sheet designs. Having worked with machine vision, sensing and control, he has a good understanding of what is required to get machines working.

• PRODUCT & PROCESS DEVELOPMENT – Winston has developed many machines and processing rooms dealing with products from Green Lipped Mussels and Scallops to surfboards blanks, bandsaws, and rocket launch infrastructure. Usually starting from a blank sheet, he will methodically research, calculate, prototype, and test his way to a final solution that will encompass a high amount key criteria.
• ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION – Winston is fluent with the requirements of automation and has a good understanding of standard practice and how to determine what is best for the required process. Having worked with robots on multiple projects he understands the flexibility they can provide and how to work around their limitations. He also knows how to develop hard automation and process control strategies and has used them in mussel and scallop processing projects, surfboard blank manufacturing
• CALCULATIONS & ANALYSIS – Winston understands the power of calculations and analysis and their ability to reduce the number of iterations required to reach an end goal. FEA is consistently used to enhance his mechanical design and all key or critical components will undergo the analysis. Failure and root cause analysis is another skill he has finely developed during his engineering career through design cycle testing. Analysis was extensively used when he designed the system for erecting and launching Rocket Labs Electron rocket.
• MACHINE VISION & SENSING – Through working alongside some of the best vision and coding engineers in New Zealand, Winston has developed a deep understanding of what is required to make a vision project successful from a mechanical standpoint. Winston has integrated off the shelf vision systems as well as lead the mechanical design for bespoke vision systems for use in adverse conditions. Vision systems were used in most of his projects with a mixture of off the shelf and custom systems being implemented. Winston has worked with product and position sensing using optical, ultrasonic, air, encoders, capacitive and hall effect sensors.
• NATURAL PRODUCTS – Winston has worked with a lot of products with natural variation. Natural products like shellfish, beef, lamb, trees etc. have a lot more variation than a man made products and are often harder to work with. Through using various sensing and design techniques Winston has learned how to work with these products. He has developed mussel and scallop opening machines, pine seedling harvester and automated beef and lamb processing.
• GENERAL ENGINEERING – Winston has had extensive experience with mechanical design. He has designed, developed, assembled and commissioned product conveying system ranging from conveyors to vibratory feeders to gravity feeding. He has specified and installed, 3 phase motors, transmission systems, servo controlled systems, linear motion systems, pneumatic actuators, hydraulic actuators, CIP and vacuum systems. He is also skilled in detailed design, bearing selection, tolerencing, sheet metal, structural, fabrications, drawings, assembly, and procurement.

Project Experience