The automotive category contains case studies and blogs related to ITM’s engineering and testing services for automobile design and manufacture.
Looking for a new career? Come visit us at the University of Cincinnati Career Fair!
Where: UC Rec Center, Booth G18
When: Sept. 15th, 2022Â –Â 10AM – 2 PM
For more information about available jobs, contact Josh Fishback via email: josh.fishback@itestsystem.com or phone: (844) 837-8797.
ITM Recruiting Full-Time Engineers at UCâs Fall Career Fair
University of Cincinnati students have an enormous opportunity to make a career-changing connection during the Professional and Technical Career Fair on Thursday, September 15.
Integrated Test & Measurement (ITM) will host a booth during Technical Day 2 of the event at UCâs Campus Recreation Center. Interested students can find ITM representatives from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Our firm is interested in filling full-time roles for students graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering, mechanical engineering technology, electrical engineering, electrical engineering technology and aerospace engineering.
In addition to seeking full-time hires, we are searching for talented students who are interested in experiencing a dynamic and fulfilling co-op opportunity where you will have a chance to learn through exciting, hands-on engineering projects around the country.
ITM is a structural test & measurement engineering service and software company in Milford, Ohio, that focuses on three vertical spaces: Industrial Monitoring, Testing Services, and our configuration based test software, iTestSystem.
ITM offers competitive compensation and benefits and a career filled with travel and new learning opportunities. ITM was founded by Tim Carlier in 2001 to help companies around the world reduce costs and improve efficiencies in their product development, manufacturing and production activities.
Interested candidates should stop by our booth inside UCâs Campus Recreation Center from10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Thursday Sept. 15 and/or email a resume and cover letter to: josh.fishback@itestsystem.com.
Our team will also be drawing for free hats and T-shirts, so be sure to find us during the event to learn more about ITM.
ITM Employs JEDEC-9704A to Test Strain on Printed Circuit Boards
Every modern electronic device includes at least one printed circuit board, so it stands to reason that these intricate parts fail at times due to stress and strain.Â
When that happens, manufacturers know they can turn to ITMâs test engineers who can develop tests to help get to the bottom of their circuit board problems. For some, the failures are happening in the field, and for others, itâs the manufacturing process thatâs overstressing the parts that make all our gadgets go.Â
Engineer Ryan âRJâ Matthews said ITM has decades of experience with printed circuit boards (PCBs), including circuit board design and development. So, strain gauge testing on PCBs using JEDEC-9704A, the global standard for microelectronics, is a natural progression for the team.Â
Matthews has led recent projects in which ITM helped companies determine how much strain and stress their PCB is experiencing both in the field and during the assembly process. Simulating the assembly process can be a daunting challenge, particularly if that process includes variables such as high heat, as it did in a recent example.Â
Still, the team was able to instrument the circuit board effectively and replicate every assembly step while also gathering crucial strain data, which they reported back to the client. The challenging test environment isnât unlike ITMâs typical rugged data acquisition projects, just on a much smaller scale. The firm specializes in strain gauge data collection on everything from behemoth off-road machinery to miniscule gadgetry.Â
Matthews said the team often employs NI c-DAQ hardware combined with ITMâs proprietary iTestSystem software, which allows them to easily configure PCB tests to collect and analyze the data. iTestSystemâs Rosette Analysis tool is used to calculate the principal strain, principal strain angle, shear strain, principal stress, and other values from strain gauge rosette data.Â
For more information on this work, our strain gauge testing services or iTestSystem, contact: Ryan Welker â Integrated Test & Measurement (ITM), LLC â ryan.welker@itestsystem.comÂ
Modern Tools Series: Whatâs In The Box?Â
This box reveal may not be quite as dramatic as the ending of âSeven,â the â95 serial killer thriller that blew moviegoersâ minds, but the ITM team is throwing open the latches nonetheless.Â
In this case, our team is taking you on a quick tour of a recently deployed Rugged Data Acquisition System. These particular black boxes of tech are riding around on high-dollar fracking equipment to remotely monitor all sorts of triggering events. Our crew builds them on the regular, and the end result is that our clients can better understand what sorts of stress, strain and vibration is taking place both en-route to their site and once operations begin. Â
ITM is known for building rugged measurement systems and data logging solutions that are deployed on everything from Class A trucks, to well frac trailers, to dam and bridge structures, oil pipelines, gensets, boilers and more.
So, without further ado, whatâs in the box? Â
We recommend a handful of essential components and elements if you are looking to build your own rugged measurement system:
So there you have it. Thatâs whatâs in the box. Build your own, or get in touch with our team, and weâll customize a system for your specific needs. Â
We also install and service all of our equipment. So if something breaks in the field, we can get you back up and collecting data or even assist with data analysis.
For more information about our rugged data acquisition systems, on-site system deployment or data analysis services, contact Josh Fishback via email at josh.fishback@itestsystem.com or phone at (844) 837-8797 x705.
ITM gives back to UCâs future engineers
The team at ITM spent half a day at the University of Cincinnati recently in an effort to invest in the next generation of engineers.
Integrated Test and Measurement President and Founder Tim Carlier volunteered to judge senior capstone projects developed by students in UCâs College of Engineering and Applied Science. Joining Carlier inside Great Hall of UCâs Tangeman University Center were Josh Fishback, ITMâs administrative director, and Chase Petzinger, a computer engineer with the Milford, Ohio, engineering firm.Â
A few of the projects they judged included a Mars Rover prototype, a homemade emergency rescue drone and an autonomous object avoidance system that uses lidar technology to prevent crashes.Â
As a whole, ITMâs crew left campus feeling encouraged by the impressive engineering skills, presentation styles and ingenuity of UCâs students. For Carlier, a day like this is an opportunity to connect with young people entering the industry. While he is always on the lookout for potential co-op connections or to recruit talented employees, building relationships and supporting young engineers is the main objective.Â
âThese guys and gals are going to be out in the workforce, and they will have jobs that could use our services someday,â said Carlier. âIt is exciting to see how well they are doing.âÂ
 For Fishback and Petzinger, both UC alumni and former track and field athletes, it was a chance to return to their alma mater. Â
 âIt is always good to come back and see how UC has progressed,â said Fishback, an accountant who graduated from UCâs Lindner College of Business. âI like seeing how the students carry themselves and how they present their senior design projects. I was pretty impressed.âÂ
Petzinger was excited to see his favorite professorâs name â Thomas Mantei â had been added to UCâs Engineering Research Center. He also found it helpful to learn what types of programming languages todayâs students are favoring. Â
âThey are doing a lot more web-based machine learning now than when I was on campus,â said Petzinger. âIt is pretty interesting to see the direction things are going. They knew their stuff. I didnât have a single student stumble over a technical question that I gave them.âÂ
Carlier handed out business cards to those he engaged with and invited them to connect on LinkedIn so he could follow their career achievements.
For more information about Engineering or CO-OP positions at ITM contact Josh Fishback via email at josh.fishback@itestsystem.com or phone at (844) 837-8797 x705.
Design Validation Finite Element Analysis (FEA) using strain gauge measurements.
Endless Testing Options Through Finite Element Analysis (FEA)Â
Whether our customers need us to validate their Finite Element Analysis (FEA) models or perform both the physical testing and the FEA, our engineers are used to helping customers with complex testing and analysis of high-value equipment.Â
As a recent example, our team is involved in a large-scale project to do engine testing for a client that requires ITM to do both the physical testing as well as the FEA simulations. This requires using a custom high-channel count telemetry system to transmit engine data to a receiver that is sampling at an extremely high rate.Â
âOnce you are able to bring in the test data and compare it to the simulated data, you are able to fine tune your FEA simulation to better reflect the real-world application,â said ITM engineer Ryan Matthews. âWe can also simulate the test in software and predict how it is going to react to the test when we can actually measure such things as strain, stress and vibration.âÂ
Matthews points out that FEA technology also helps the team determine the precise best placement of strain gauge during physical testing. And depending on complexity, a single simulation can take a few seconds or months to run.Â
For obvious reasons â mainly the cost of bringing high-value assets to failure â running repeated strain gauge tests on components simply isnât feasible, but ITMâs in-house capabilities and close partnership with sister firm SixDOF opens up endless FEA simulation options to clients.Â
âSometimes you are only going to be able to test a structure or a part once before it fails,â says Matthews. âSo it becomes crucial to do a limited number of physical tests then correlate that to your FEA. Then you can pretty much run unlimited simulations.âÂ
For more information about our testing, strain gauging, and FEA modeling services contact Ryan Welker via email at ryan.welker@itestsystem.com of phone @ (844) 837-8797.
The students and advisors huddled around the computer react as they watch the signal yield an immediate spike within ITMâs iTestSystem software…
building a rugged and flexible in-vehicle testing solution to measure the vibration levels.
…more than a thousand miles away. A display of gauges, needles and dials showed precisely how their product performed during every day over-the-road stress.
High-tech measurement systems? Not a problem.
Complex data acquisition or custom software solutions? Right in our wheelhouse.
At ITM, these kinds of challenges have become commonplace in our lab, but one recent project that hit our doorstep stretched our engineers, and not for the reasons you may be thinking.
Our customer wanted an old-school manual operator control station. Think classic-style red and green, push-button start and stop controls, which they wanted to energize various parts of a large test cell for a military marine application.
The ask was a bit out of ITMâs typical range of services simply because most systems they develop don’t require manual control stations to run their equipment. Instead, their customers usually opt for computer-controlled testing, which ITM crafts regularly. Still, the job required a complete CAD design, a custom cabinet enclosure and hundreds of electrical components to be designed and assembled, which our team successfully delivered to the satisfaction of the client.
Modern Integration
The same customer also wanted to be able to collect complex data from the tests, and ITM, of course, delivered on this challenge as well thanks to its proprietary iTestSystem software, which computer engineer Chase Petzinger deployed to build a custom DAQ.Â
iTestSystem is an engineering measurement software platform that enables test engineers to organize, acquire, view and analyze data from machinery, processes, vehicles and other complex rugged measurement systems. iTestSystem was specifically designed for use with NI cDAQ or FieldDAQ hardware for data collection and data logging, so it was no stretch to equip it to pull down data from the military equipment test.Â
In the end, the job required running new-school modern technology to handle the data collection and reporting simultaneously alongside the old-school analog operator control panel. From successfully assembling hundreds of electrical components to deploying custom software that can handle hundreds of channels of data from a wide variety of sensors at once, ITM truly showed its range on this project.
For more information about our iTestSystem or ITMâs testing services, contact Ryan Welker @ (844) 837-8797 x702.
ITM provides software development, structural and mechanical testing services, industrial monitoring, strain gauging, and data analysis solutions to clients on six continents. ITM is a recognized National Instruments Gold Alliance Partner.
