John Killow - Experience record
Corby
Northamptonshire
NN18 9EL
Northamptonshire
NN18 9EL
Tel: 01536 741538 E-mail: johnkillow@talktalk.net
| Experience as an employee |
| 1945 - 1950 | Engineer student with Siemens Brothers Ltd, Woolwich, London, an apprenticeship lasting 5 years which put me through about 20 departments of this great telecommunications manufacturing company, from machine shops and inspection through drawing offices to research laboratories, while attending polytechnic one day a week plus two evenings. |
| 1950 - 1952 | National Service REME, Sergeant instructor in Rockex message enciphering and deciphering equipment. Saw 3 months active service in Korea in an armoured workshop recovering battle-damaged Centurion tanks |
| 1952 - 1958 | Design engineer in the Mechanical Development department of Siemens Brothers who at that time were competing with five other UK telephone manufacturers to provide a technical solution to the Post Office's postwar need for high speed automatic switching nationwide, the so called Subscriber Trunk Dialling project (STD). My contribution as a team member was to develop a high speed electromechanical motor uniselector switching device based on an experimental design from Siemens & Halske in Berlin before the war, and make the UK version able to work at previously impossible speeds like 5 times faster. |
| 1959 - 1964 |
Project Leader, Redifon Ltd, Flight Simulator Division, Crawley. Projects included a simulator for the de Havilland
Comet 4 for BOAC, the first flight simulator ever to provide fuselage motion although only in the pitch axis. Also, contributed to development work on a method of providing a realistic visual image of an airport, using a scale model and colour TV projection to a screen in front of the pilots window. For a year, led a special group responsible for updating the simulators operated by the Royal Air Force for the operational V-bomber force providing UK's nuclear deterrent via the squadrons of Vulcan, Victor and Valiant aircraft. The simulators had to be kept up to date with modifications in weapons, navigation, instrumentation etc being installed in the aircraft. |
| 1965 - 1967 |
Managed a project group responsible for the building and commissioning of naval tactics trainers for all NATO and other
friendly navies, under an initiative of the United States Navy. |
| 1967 - 1971 |
Engineering Manager of the newly formed Radar Simulator Division of Redifon Ltd to exploit a new market in highly realistic
radar simulators for marine navigation and civil aviation ground control, approach and weather radars. This equipment was a great commercial success in many countries including the Soviet Union. This division built the first naval war games simulator controlled by a digital minicomputer, and supplied it to the Spanish navy. |
| 1972 - 1976 | Project Manager, APV Automation Ltd, Crawley, process control engineers in hygienic liquids handling and food preparation. Projects included computerised control of the Guiness lager brewery, Park Royal , London and several dairies in France.
I had special development responsibility for the hardware design of the ACCOS microprocessor based distributed control system, which replaced labour intensive operations in a brewery or dairy by one-man operation by a single engineer in a control room. Once it was widely adopted I delivered training courses to APV subsidiaries abroad. I also contributed significantly to the design of the proprietary high level process control language used (Paracode) |
| 1976 - 1982 | Electronic Engineering Development manager, Vacuumatic Ltd, Harwich, Setting up and staffing a multidisciplined engineering department for the development of innovative machines and systems for the food and printing industries, and the application of new technology to improve existing projects.
Projects included the first British microprocessor-based sheet paper counting machine for commercial and banknote printers, a high speed automatic price labeller for random weight food packages (such as cheese), and the first microprocessor based printing press performance monitoring system. |
| 1983 | Systems Manager, DKS Automation Ltd, Corby. Responsible for all system engineering activities over a broad field which included bespoke systems for industrial control and automatic product testing to a very high professional standard but unfortunately vulnerable to commercial risk. The company passed into receivership due to failure of its parent company Top of the page |
| Experience as an employer |
| 1983 - 1987 |
Established and operated the business of CDO Systems Ltd in Corby, based on the foundations of DKS, and functioned as its managing director. Industrial electronic system engineers and consultants (DTI MAPCON authorised consultant 1063), picking up some of the activities of DKS Automation and adding to them the design and marketing of microcomputer-based real-time data collection systems, and industrial system hardware.
Products included RS232, 422 and 485 serial data converters for extending data transmission distance over a cable and which went into service on the M1 motorway for hazard signalling Feasibility studies successfully completed under the MAPCON scheme were for a commercial cold store energy management and information system, on-vehicle axle weighing for load control to meet new legislation, automatic stock control in a famous flour milling operation, an automatic picking and despatch control system using machine readable codes for a large automated book warehouse, and the modernisation of the centralised ingredient management and recipe formulation in the largest bakery in UK. Projects included a production line monitoring system for making tins for condensed milk, an energy saving pivot irrigator control system for the Libyan Sahara, modernising the controls of wrapping machines in a bakery, and a PLC based system for automated in-place pipeline and tank cleaning at Bass Brewing, Tadcaster. The business provided employment for 5 people but became unmanageable owing to problems finding qualified and reliable staff in Corby at that time and I therefore closed it down Top of the page |
| Experience as a consultant |
| 1987 | Total design of a precision portable instrument calibrator, including pressure measurement, Particularly intended for use in the commissioning of instrumentation control loops without having to carry a multiplicity of separate instruments. Computer aided design (CAD) was used throughout, including the internal printed motherboard and its daughter boards which gave an internal assembly almost totally free of discrete wiring. Designed for volume production. An assignment to set up an electrical engineering department for a sheet metal fabrication company , to increase their business by taking on the design and supply of fully assembled and wired control panels. This included setting up in-house standards , preferred components, drawing office systems, estimating methods and cost control, the selection of staff and close supervision of the winning and delivery of the first two control panel contracts for Anglian Water and Courtaulds Acetate. |
| 1989 |
An assignment to assist an automation company in Milton Keynes to recover from a late delivery crisis threatening severe penalties, over an OMRON PLC-controlled smart conveyor system for delivering TV deflection yoke / CRT assemblies to a sequence of alignment workstations, and commissioning the system at Sony, Bridgend
An assignment to programme an Omron PLC to control a complex system of conveyors and lifts for IBM, transporting expensive disk drive assemblies through a sequence of clean-room assembly and test station with elaborate fail-safe precautions against colliding |
| 1990 |
Solving a problem for the Ministry of Transport on the M1 motorway where at Watford Gap the railway electrification was inducing such heavy earth currents as to swamp the digital data on the underground semi-duplex transmission cables for the motorway signalling and traffic analysis systems, whenever a train passed. The solution was to employ RS485 opto-isolated serial data repeaters (designed by CDS Electronics) to split the run into short sections to eliminate common-mode noise and regenerate a clean signal for the next section
The abstracting into English of more than 1,000 German patent applications covering a broad range of technical subjects, for publication in a commercial Engineering Patents Index. |
| 1991 |
The design of a monitoring system for a satellite broadcasting company to continuously monitor the stereophonic audio feeds from the Post Office tower, numbering 25 channels, and generate an alarm if either or both lines of a stereo power fell below a threshold average value for level, or if the phasing of one line of a pair was crossed over
A design study for a radio telemetry system to give automatic reports to a central station about the status of unattended pivot irrigators in the Libyan Sahara desert, in order to reduce the cost of travelling to each site at frequent intervals in order to protect the growing crops against irrigator malfunction. This study included the estimation of antenna heights and transmitter power in order to ensure reliable operation across intervening high ground |
| 1992 |
An assignment for a company building hydraulic cutting presses to rationalise their whole method of writing PLC programmes for customised machines which involved converting their mindset to structured programmes with a Finite State Machine sequencer and re-usable programme modules
A further assignment for the same company to design a control system for a travelling-head hydraulic cutting press, using a universal PLC programme with concealed software switches to configure machine function and facilities according to a wide range of cutting parameters An assignment to lead a small team programming a Siemens 135 PLC to control a complex slitter/rewinder machine for operation in total darkness, for AGFA at their 35mm photographic film factory |
| 1995 |
The design and coding of a Finite State Machine programme in a Siemens PLC, to control a semi-automated test rig for power steering assemblies at a supplier to Austin Rover, Longbridge
An assignment to extend a complex safety monitoring system at the engine / fuel research laboratories of ESSO at Abingdon. The system already comprising 3 Modicon networked PLCs and a PC running a graphics alarm annunciator package was extended by the addition of a fourth PLC running code developed under Graysoft. Then recommission the system and improve the system documentation. |
| 1996 |
An assignment for a company already producing a range of inkjet marking systems, to organise all the necessary documentation, specifications, testing procedures, safety standards etc in preparation for EC approval of a new high powered laser printing system for product marking and coding
Top of the page |
| Personal |
| 1929 | Born in Beckenham, Kent |
| 1955 |
Car owner and driver 50 years
Reasonably good technical French and Spanish Experienced design draughtsman and technical writer Married, have two daughters |
| 1986 |
Personal CV accepted by Dept of Trade & Industry (Warren Springs Laboratory) and the National Engineering Laboratory, East Kilbride for authoring of grant-aided feasibility study reports
Elected chairman of the EMTECH consortium of East Midlands engineering consultants which was set up to encourage the greater takeup by industry of the various incentives offered by government for the use of microelectronics, and to offer a consortium approach to the solution of complex feasibility study problems Top of the page |
| Education and Qualifications |
| 1940 - 1945 | Bromley County Grammar school, gaining matriculation to London University in 1944 | |
| 1945 - 1950 | Woolwich Polytechnic, London, part time day release gaining Higher National Certificate in telecommunications engineering, 1950. Also two evenings weekly, gaining intermediate City & Guilds certificates in Maths and Telephony 1948 | |
| Hardware design experience |
|
- Drawing Office procedures and practice, with some CAD experience
- Engineering layouts and detailing - Electronic circuit and printed circuit board design - Digital circuit design, all logic families up to VLSI - Analogue circuit design up to precision calibrator standard - Computer interface and data acquisition circuit design - All aspects of technical documentation for both in-house and customer use |
| Software design experience |
|
- Motorola 6800, 6809 assembler, including macro-based pseudo high level language forms for special machine applications, and the development of methods for
implementing Finite State Machines in software - Z80 assembler running on NSC800 COS processor - FORTH running on RCA 1802 - C, Pascal running on 6809 - Database management applications under DBASE2 and SCULPTOR - UNIX and OS9 multitasking operating systems - PARACODE high level process control language proprietary to APV Automation Ltd - Ladder diagram programming on Square D and Allen Bradley PLCs, including some very innovative programmes exploiting the advanced instruction set of the Square D system giving programme flow control via subroutine jumps |
| Commercial and overseas experience |
|
- negotiations for radar simulators and naval tactics trainers in South Africa, USA, Holland, Spain, Chile, Pakistan, Egypt, USSR and Finland
- supervision of installation and commissioning of training simulator projects in Canada, Israel, Greece, Germany, France, Spain, USSR, Finland and Libya - an extended period in Spain managing a major contract to refurbish, update and relocate all the early model radar simulators operated by the Spanish Merchant Navy schools, and to organise and deliver training on their operation and maintenance Top of the page |
2008 © OliSoft - Kittiwake Business Aid