Undersea Weapons > Engineering Design (ed)

The Engineering Design (ED) Division led by Mr. Robert Gleim provides electrical and mechanical computer-aided design (ECAD/MCAD) and Data Management services to the Undersea Weapons Office (UWO) and the other Offices of the Applied Research Laboratory (ARL). Since the inception of the Laboratory at Penn State in 1945, the drafting & design department has created over 125,000 drawings. This support of Laboratory projects has been and will continue to be essential in providing accurate information for machinists, technicians, engineers, and project leaders at ARL. Since 1986, program needs have been met utilizing computer aided design (CAD) in Siemens NX and Altium Designer (and their predecessors Unigraphics and Mentor Graphics).

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ARL drafting and design efforts include the following areas:

  • Mechanical Hardware and Electronic Printed Circuit Board Design
  • Detail Drafting
  • Assembly Drawings and Bill of Materials
  • Solid Modeling
  • Archive of Laboratory Projects
  • Large Format Scanning and Copying

The Engineering Design Division employs recognized engineering standards and the latest configuration management methods to deliver outstanding products to our sponsors. For example, all designs comply with DoD and industry accepted standards, such as, ASME Y14.100 Engineering Drawing Practices and ASME Y14.5 Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing. The data management group uses Product Data Management (PDM) software to manage MCAD and ECAD data in addition to other supporting documentation, such as; specifications, procedures, and assembly & test reports.

The PDM software is essential to maintain accurate configuration & change control and to manage the product lifecycle. In a continuing effort to provide the best to ARL's sponsors, it is anticipated that during the 2012 calendar year, Teamcenter Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software will replace the current PDM system and be available as a Laboratory wide data management tool. This new tool will allow a higher level of collaboration between engineers and designers, and permit complete traceability of all drawings, documents, and software. This enhanced capability will greatly simplify the creation of Technical Data Packages (TDP) for ARL's customers.