Engineering Apprenticeships and Work Experience
Meet Oliver, doing a day a week pre-apprentice work experience. Find out more about Oliver and electronic & mechanical design opportunities at EMP Designs.
Women in Science
On the UN’s International Day of Women and Girls in Science, Zoe our senior design engineer explains how her career unfolded and how she’s supporting the next generation of girls.
Electronic Engineering Equipment: The Jetter Machine
Our jetter machine has significantly improved the speed of our response – we can create higher quality PCB boards within half an hour allowing rapid turnaround of our bespoke electronic designs.
Electronic & Mechanical Engineering Apprenticeships at EMP Designs
EMP Designs greatly value having and developing young apprentices and are involved with local colleges. Find out more about the experience of current apprentice Lewis and what he’s been up to…
Project X – the remote control line follower
What happens if you give a sixth form design student a brief and 1 week’s access to EMP’s facilities?
The project was a line follower with remote control. The process included:
- Understanding the brief
- 3D design and modelling
- 3D printing of custom parts
- CNC of custom chassis
- Component identifying and purchasing
- Schematic design
- PCB design
- Microprocessor programming
The results from the young mind certainly impressed us!
If you’d like to see the video of the project in action, visit our social media pages (links top right of page).
Film and TV Lighting, Motion & Animatronics
We’ve been working continuously with film and TV companies and supporting companies since our inception. He’s an overview of the type of work we do.
Micro Radio DMX pixel controller – created for use on film sets
Working regularly with film makers, we created a micro radio DMX pixel controller for use on set. At only 12mm wide, it is exactly the same width as LED strip, allowing the controller to be completely hidden away, ideal for use on lead active props.
It receives the full DMX universe, enabling control of every individual LED on addressable RGBW strip and the creation of any colour or pattern. More controllers can be added to address more than the full DMX 512 channels. This device has been popular already being used to illuminate many movie weapons.
We also developed a recordable version of the radio DMX pixel controller. This allows a pre-defined light pattern to be programmed in and run back on a repeating loop via 2 playback buttons to minimise background pattern channel usage.
In line with this technology, our customers have also requested many bespoke custom single circuit board contained units, which have the LEDs on one side of the circuit board and the control electronics on the back, and sometimes the battery too!!. These have been used to produce a range of other lighting effects on film props, including lanterns, flickering candles and glowing fireplace embers.
Look out for our new 12mm wide five channel 5M strip controller coming soon!
Electronic Product Designer Required
The Job
As our business grows, we are looking for an Electronic Product Designer to join our friendly, small and busy team. Our projects are diverse and we offer a dynamic environment where no two days will be the same – from industrial mechanics, to retail projects, to working with leading film production companies on new concepts for special effects, props and set lighting control.
Essentially, we are looking for the right fit – someone passionate about solving electronics problems and willing to embrace new challenges and be part of the team. The extent of the role will depend on the person and their experience.
Requirements
If you have 3 or more years’ electronics experience, a minimum of a HNC or HND, and skills in the following areas:
• Electronic product development
• Analog and digital electronic design / engineering
• Schematic design
• PCB layout
• Understanding of micro controller integration
• 3D design and prototyping
Possible Additional Skills
In addition any of the following skills would be a bonus but we do not expect candidates to have all (or indeed any) such skills and experience:
• Electronic and electrical schematic design
• Microprocessor programming in PICMICRO, both 8 and 16 bit assembly and C languages
• Industrial and motion controller programming preferably around the codesys platform
• Ability to program programmable logic and FPGA’s
• Mechanical design ability with 3D Cad preferably Solidworks
• Adept at picking up new programming languages and a willingness to try
• Web and social media aware with some understanding in web page updating and broadcasting new content
We are looking for someone with a positive personality and the ability to work both individually and as a team member. You should be content to work hands-on in both prototyping and small batch production. We require the ability, or the desire to develop the ability, to liaise with clients to understand their complete requirement and then be able to communicate this full spec back to the EMP team.
A sense of humour would also be a massive bonus. EMP is a small company and the ability and desire to mix with the team is important.
We expect the salary to be in the region of £30,000, but for the right candidate this could be considerably more.
The company is based in Farnborough and the convenience of being close to our premises would be important and make it easier to work flexibly in an interesting environment.
If you feel this could be a good fit for you, please send a CV and a brief covering letter to graham@empdesigns.co.uk
LV8 Pro arrives
The LV8 is now available in LV8 Pro version. The LV8 is a popular product from our market-leading LV range of radio embedded LED controllers. It is one of our larger products offering 8 channels. The LV8 Pro is a streamlined, more powerful version, with 8 amps of power per channel.
As with all our controllers, it is quality designed and built in the UK to deliver the best in reliable flicker-free lighting control.
For more information on our products click here.
SkyNode now with RDM
SkyNode RDM – The SkyNode micro-radio DMX receiver now comes in a Remote Device Management version.
At 26 x 50 x 10 mm, it is the same depth as the standard SkyNode, but just slightly longer allowing for the addition of RDM technology.
Still the smallest unit on the market, it docks to the back of any light to become an integral feature. It fits into any DMX input instantly giving RDM radio control.
For more information on our products please click here.