Iain Clarke's Online CV

Swedish Version Coming Soon!

Contact Information

• SE Phone: +46 (0)768366130
• UK Phone: +44 (0)7764936850
• Email: iain@imcsoft.co.uk

Skills List

• C++
• MFC
• Microsoft Windows Platforms
• International customer relations
• Motor control servo systems, especially Delta Tau, but also Berger Lahr, Siemens, Aerotech and Baldor
• Ultrasonic Testing / General Non Destructive Testing
• Also proficient with network programming, Windows Mobile, Microsoft Office, Electronics, Firmware, Device drivers, Technical Writing and other PC skills.
• Driver's licence

Quick Biography

I was born in the UK, lived in the Middle East for my early years, and went to school in Scotland. My passion for programming began early. When I was 10 years old, I started programming the school's BBC Micros in BASIC, and 6502 assembly. In senior school, I moved to writing software on our early PCs.

I then studied Physics at Canterbury University, and was awarded a Bachelors Degree with Honours (Kandidatexamen). This was a three year course, but I was awarded a scholarship to spend my middle year on exchange with Indiana University in the US.

After a couple of temporary jobs, I started work with Meccasonics as the junior programmer, helping develop ultrasonic scanning systems. After a year, I became the whole software department. I initially maintained and evolved the existing codebase using Borland C++ under Windows 3.1. In 1999, I developed new software using Microsoft Visual C++ / MFC on Windows 2000, as many of our customers were moving to NT systems as part of their Millenium Bug projects.

When the owner of Meccasonics retired, I, and the other key employees of Meccasonics, formed a new company, Midas NDT. We continued our customer relationships, and after the aerospace slump of 2002-2004, we slowly expanded.

Through my employment with both companies, I have travelled regularly to work with global customers, often on my own many times zones away from the United Kingdom.

Most recently I´ve moved to Sweden to get married to my Swedish fiancee. The move has been very exciting, and I have recently started a course in Swedish at Örebro University. I resigned from full time work with Midas, but have been assisting them and existing customers on a part time basis during the transition period from me to their new software engineer. I am seeking full time employment in Sweden / Norway, preferably within commuting range of Örebro.

High points of recent work

While Midas employed a replacement software engineer to take over from me, I have developed the production software used by Midas NDT, from the main Zeus software, to various helper utilities.

The main Zeus software is a fully integrated software suite, controlling motors, capturing ultrasonics, and analysing the results.

The motor control software ranged from simple stepper control using internally developed electronics, to complex motion control servo systems from Aerotech, Delta Tau, and latterly Siemens. I designed some of our later models of stepper control circuits.

The ultrasonics are largely controlled by internally developed circuit boards and firmware. As my software needed to communicate with these electronics, I was intimately involved in theirdesign. We also interfaced with ultrasonics (ie phased array) from other manufacturers.

Lastly, I was involved with almost all on site installations, to verify correct machine operation and to train the customers on all parts of the system. I also did remote and onsite troubleshooting.

Codeproject

I was an early member of The Codeproject, which is a prominent software developers website, with many useful articles and forums. As the only developer in my previous company, I used the website for ideas and tips, and soon I started to contribute to the site myself.

For my contributions, I have been awared one of only 40 MVPs[^] (Most Valued Professional) by the founders of the site. This was awarded for a combination of my article writing, and for helping other users of the C++/MFC forums with their technical troubles. This was awarded to 40 of the 6 million users of the website.

Some of my articles are listed on the right of this page. Please feel free to browse!

References

I have references in three countries, available upon request.

The end!

Thank you for reading this far!

Codeproject Articles:

During my work as the only programmer in the company I often had to figure out new solutions for programming. I shared some of these ideas with the programmer community at Code project.

I needed to be able to detect when a particular USB device had been inserted or removed from a PC. From that investigation, and from Codeproject user questions, I developed the technique more generally, and wrote: Detecting when drives are added or removed[^].

I needed to learn how to transform coordinates from coordinates in a CAD system to a machine's coordinate system. So I wrote: Warping Coordinates with Matrices[^].

As part of developing a tool using GDI+, I needed a compact way of choosing line styles, hatch styles, colours... That inspired my most recent (and well received) article Generic Picker Dropdown Control[^].

All seven articles.[^]

Demonstrations of my work at Midas:

Jet engine fan blade scanners[^]

These tanks do not look very special, but they are responsible for scanning the large fan blades for almost every Rolls Royce commercial engine in the world. They map the internal surface of the hollow blade. My software had to analyse the results through chaotic results, and declare the blade good or bad. I still find it scary how important the code for that one dialog box is...

Complex geometry inspection systems[^]

More recently, I developed software to control two 5 axis gantries to scan complex shaped parts. This used complex kinematics to maintain the aligment of the water jet from each head to within 0.1mm, over an operating space up to 20m x 3x x 4m. All motion control is abstracted away from the user, so they don't need any motion control knowledge.

The Zeus software[^]

Zeus' Overlay tool, a recently developed feature[^]

This page shows a tool for designing, adding, and manipulating a graphical overlay for a scan, to aid in detecting whether detected features are in their proper locations. I needed to implement most of a basic vector graphics package, utilising GDI+ and my own custom controls.