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Corporate
management never likes hearing that it's going to take a little
science or some new technology to bring a product concept to
fruition. But some projects really need a bit of scientific
thinking to get them going. Consider the client using ultrasound
to detect "double feeds" in a document transport.
No one in the company really understood how the ultrasound probe
detected that two sheets of paper were stuck together. Once
we realized that the stuck sheets behaved like the mirrors in
a Fabry-Perot optical resonator, it was easy to show how the
system could be tuned for best performance. |
Where
to Get It
| Presco's
core technical skills are in digital and analog circuit design,
but we also have a good understanding of the physical sciences.
We are located near the Yale University campus where we have
close ties to the faculty members and their research laboratories.
Unlike many small firms, we have an excellent technical library
of our own where we do much of the research necessary to support
our clients' interests. |
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The
personal experience of our staff includes skills in lasers and
optics, acoustics, communications, and medical instrumentation.
We are not "experts" in these fields but we have a
thorough working knowledge of some interesting topics such as
the use of lasers for industrial cutting and drilling, or the
use of acoustics for welding and for medical diagnostics. See
the topic on Measurement
While Drilling for a highly successful acoustic communication
method that relied on mud as the transmission channel. |
| Optical
methods are a powerful tool for industrial sensing. One example
is the use of mid-infrared ATR spectroscopy for Food Analysis.
An interesting aspect of this project was the use of a Cerebellar
Model Arithmetic Computer (CMAC) algorithm for pattern recognition
of the resultant spectra. Modeled after the behavior of the
human brain, the CMAC algorithm was developed by the National
Bureau of Standards as a compact, trainable decision maker for
use in microprocessors. It has many of the attributes of a neural
net or fuzzy logic algorithm. |
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Presco
has experience with a variety of unusual applications ranging
from ultrasound non-destructive testing for rocket motors to
instrumentation for a 22 million volt Van de Graaff generator.
Each of these projects has benefited from a combination of scientific
and technical thinking. We take pride in knowing when to do
each. |
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