RESUME

FRANK H. GERHARD

 Frank Gerhard is a successful engineer offering 50 years experience in creative electronic equipment design.  Much of the personal design work has been at the leading edge of the state‑of‑the‑art.  In addition to detail design experience, Frank has extensive direct experience in the allied fields of engineering that are so essential for a new design to mature from inception to a producible, profitable product. 

 As Vice President of Engineering, of DATUM INC., he has held direct responsibility for engineering management within a 500 man, high technology, engineering oriented firm.  While much of his experience has been concentrated in energy conversion systems, instrumentation electronics and servomechanisms, the range of his successful projects has provided a diversified base from which to assault a wide spectrum of assignments.

 SPECIALTIES

 Power Supplies                                  Switchmode Line Switchers / Linear Supplies

                                                            Current Mode Switching Power Supplies

                                                            Inverters

                                                            DC/DC Converters

                                                            Battery Charging Systems

                                                            Uninterruptable Power Supplies

                                                            Switching Amplifiers

                                                            Active Loads

 

Lighting Equipment                              Electronic Ballasts / Starters for Fluorescent and HID Lamps

                                                            Aircraft Incandescent Dimming Systems

                                                            Fluorescent Dimming Systems

 

Magnetics Design                                Magnetics for Switchmode Power Supplies

                                                            Core and Coil Ballasts

                                                            Magnetics for Electronic Lighting Equipment

                                                            HID Lamp Starter Transformers Up To 12,000 Volts

                                                            Relays / Solenoids

 

Data Acquisition Systems                   High Speed Low Level Analog Input Multiplexers

                                                            Quality Instrumentation Amplifiers

                                                            Analog‑To‑Digital and Digital‑To‑Analog Converters

                                                            Transducer Signal Conditioning

                                                            Programmable Precision Reference Voltage sources

                                                            CCD Conditioning and Digitizing circuitry

 

Telephony                                            Subscriber Carrier Systems

                                                            T‑1 Interfaces

                                                            Speaker‑Phones

                                                            Telephone Line Interfaces to FCC Specifications

 

Servomechanisms                               Hydraulic Loading Servos

                                                            Printer Paper Motion Control Servos

                                                            Hall Effect Feedback Chart Recorder Pen Motor Servos

                                                            Precision Position Servos

                                                            Tachometer Feedback Integrating Servos

 

Medical Electronics                              Bio‑Physical Amplifiers / Electroencephalograph

                                                            Patient Monitoring Systems

                                                            High Frequency Biological Probe

 

EDUCATION

 

University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA.

 

Mr. Gerhard received his B.S. Degree in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California.  He has continued graduate level studies and has completed a number of graduate courses.

 

WORK EXPERIENCE

 

Orbiting Satellite Data Acquisition System

The system consists of an experiment tray and associated electronics. 60 channels of data on strain, temperature, radiation, accumulated mass, and ablation are collected and formatted for transmission to Earth.  Gerhard Engineering's portion of the system is the transducer signal conditioning, analog multiplexing, and analog to digital conversion. This circuitry occupies three of the five printed circuit boards comprising the system.  The entire project, from the first meeting to discuss specifications to successful completion of acceptance tests of 2 systems, spanned only 12 weeks.  One of the systems subsequently passed qualification testing to the applicable environmental specifications with no additional rework.  The second system was launched in early 1989 and has been transmitting valuable scientific data since that time.

 

Dimming Electronic Ballasts for Fluorescent and HID Lamps

This 7-year project started with several years of basic research on the adaptation of switching power supply techniques to powering gas discharge lamps.  Meeting the stringent price/performance criteria necessary to be competitive with conventional ballasts required development of innovative circuitry and resulted in several U.S. and foreign patents. The effort included design of a semi‑custom control chip. The ballast line is currently being produced by a leading manufacturer of switching power supplies.

 

T-1 Interface

Innovative design extended the permissible input signal range of the interface by  a factor of two.  The interface is incorporated in the Data Multiplexer of a leading manufacturer of DEC compatible products.  Sales of the multiplexer are currently $2 million per year.

 

Electroencephalograph

Designed all electronics for an electroencephalograph with closed‑loop servo‑controlled pen motor employing an innovative Hall effect device feedback sensor.  Designed all analog electronics, including amplifiers, analog filters, interconnection subsystems and specialized high impedance recording technology.

 

 

Carrier Telephony

Headed a design group that developed a carrier telephony total system.  This very successful design resulted in a new company that manufactures 30 million dollars worth of this apparatus each year.

 

 

Data Acquisition Sub-Systems

Total detailed design of a complete line of measurement assemblies for high speed data acquisition systems including programmable gain differential low‑level multiplexer, sample‑and‑hold amplifier, precision analog‑to‑digital converters (high speed successive approximation and dual slope integrating type), digital‑to‑analog converter, transducer excitation power supplies, and signal conditioning.

 

This comprehensive family of analog subsystems formed the basis for data acquisition system sales of 4 million dollars per year.

 

Computer Rotating Memories

Direct technical management responsibility for a computer rotating memory design team developing magnetic drum memories and magnetic disc mass memories.