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NewswireToday - /newswire/ -
Maynard, MA, United States, 10/08/2008 - Contract design, development, and production of high-tech electronics is what Orchid Technologies Engineering and Consulting, Inc., is all about.
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Contract design, development, and production of high-tech electronics is what Orchid Technologies Engineering and Consulting, Inc., is all about. The company combines capabilities in hardware and software engineering with the ability to perform detailed designs, construct prototype units, refine prototype designs, and manufacture the electronic product. With design capabilities ranging from subsystems to entire products, Orchid Technologies also provides design review and updates or corrections to existing designs.
“We do lots and lots of different designs, we’ve been working together as a teamfor over 10 years, and we bring a wealth of experience and know-how to the design process,” says Paul Nickelsberg, president and senior engineer at Orchid Technologies. “So we tend to be an advocate for our customers’ and clients’ design architectures. If they’re not quite sure how to do things the best way electronically, we often know, from the gut, the right way to go, and to come up with some really neat architectures.”
One of the company’s key strengths, according to Nickelsberg, is its ability to rescue a project in situations that might best be described as “design emergencies.”
“Many of our biggest successes have been designed in three months or less, from nothing to working prototypes,” he says. “And it’s because of our experience and lean size that we can move mountains to get it done, whereas a larger company may have quite a bit of organizational red tape to cut through. We can come in and solve a problem like a laser beam, and it’s a big reason why we’re often hired.”
In one case, Orchid was approached by a major medical device company to take the reins of an electronics design project that had been in development for three years and was languishing due to a series of poor architectural choices by the client’s original design team. The OEM was developing a cough-assist device to assist patients who, because of illness or infirmity, are unable to activate the musculature required to cause a cough. According to Nickelsberg, one of the major challenges was showing a certain amount of success quickly. After studying and re-evaluating the entire electronics design, Orchid made radical changes and delivered working prototype units in four months.
“This particular unit has a very special motor that develops, like a vacuum cleaner, the air pressure that’s used in the cough process,” said Nickelsberg. “The motor is special because of its tiny size and because of the large amount of air that has to be moved in such a small space. So if you can imagine a vacuum cleaner motor ‘on steroids,’ that’s the kind of motor we needed to design. It needed to be quiet, it needed to have a lot of power, and it needed to operate at a very low operating voltage while still providing very high pressure for a motor of its size. So that was no small feat, and, in particular, this motor was a 12V DC brushless motor with very, very low inductance.”
About Orchid Technologies
Orchid develops custom electronic products for OEM’s. Orchid has successfully completed hundreds of electronic product designs. Orchid offers its clients a skillful blend of innovative hardware and software design with practical production expertise.
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info[.]orchid-tech.com 
