“I’m Doing my Part to Save the Planet.” An Interview with an Engineer.

We recently interviewed Dominic Spano, our principal engineer, to take a little look into his mind and share more about who we are, what we do, and what our employees find important about their jobs. Dominic is so full of humor and thoughtfulness, we only hope it comes through in this transcribed version of our conversation.  

How long have you been with ePropelled?  

I joined pretty early on, so I’ve been here for almost three years. 

What did you study?  

I have a mechanical engineering degree. That was my first degree and I started out in mechanical engineering. Then I went to work for a company where I was put in an electric motor division. There was one other mechanical engineer there and a whole bunch of electrical engineers. And I thought: “I can’t even talk to these guys!” So I took electrical engineering as a foreign language. So now I have two bachelor’s degrees.  

It’s been good. Motor design is typically classified under electrical engineering because it’s got wires and electricity and stuff. But it also has bearings and shafts, and housings, and other mechanical requirements. It’s really the crossroads going from electrical to mechanical. So from that standpoint, it’s been a really great background for that kind of design.  

What made you choose your profession?  

My own interests. As a kid I was always curious about how things worked and how they went together. I took apart lots of stuff. I put back together not quite as much stuff. I always wanted to see how things worked and not just the mechanical stuff: bicycles and lawnmowers and stuff. But also radios, stereos, and such. Always asking: “why does this work like that?”  

A lot of engineering is people wanting to break things up: “This is mechanical engineering, this is electrical engineering,” but the reality is that all engineers have the same fundamental classes. There are basic electricity classes, and there are basic mechanics classes, etc. And just because you’re a mechanical engineer doesn’t mean you can’t know how resistors and inductors work.  

Is this what you wanted to do since early on? Take things apart and put them back together again? 

It kind of worked out that way. It was a mechanical interest. My great uncle was a paediatrician in Buffalo. He wanted me to be a doctor very badly. But it just wasn’t my thing.  

You have an incredibly varied background. As you said yourself: “military, industrial, small stuff, big stuff, challenging applications, high temperatures, low pressure, small sizes, anything and everything.” But which one was your favourite job that you always keep thinking about or remember fondly? 

I liked them all. It’s not just the work. It’s also the people. My first engineering job was for a company that was one of the 100 best places to work for in America. It was really nice. I was there for over 20 years. Then I moved to another one and that was great too. Another good group of people. Then I had one that wasn’t so great. And now I’m here. And people here are really great too. This is probably the most intimate team, I would say. It’s just a small group. We have very well-aligned goals and we get along great. We have no issues of any sort. If we have a problem, we go solve it. It’s really nice.  

What do you do in any given week? 

Sometimes I do motor assembly, sometimes I do marketing, sometimes I do sales, sometimes I even do design. Sometimes I do them all. It's also one of the things that are interesting about the job. Being a small company, you don’t say: “Here is the thing. Go test it.” It’s more along the lines of: “OK. I’m ready to go. Now I have to test this thing. What am I going to test it on? I have to design some test equipment. Then I have to get it made or maybe I have to make it. What parts do I need?” 

We have a test stand we’re using for safety testing and there were a few parts that required a machine shop, so we sent those off to have them made and the other parts needed to be, let’s call it fabricated, and I did that myself. It does save some time once we do stuff that’s out of the ordinary and I’ve also done that for a long time. It fits my “things I like to do” list.  

Do you have a good mix of actual hands-on mechanical engineering and theoretical work or is your job heavily skewed towards one?   

I start with a clean sheet of paper on a lot of the designs. When it’s: ‘This isn’t working’ or ‘This needs to be different.’ I go from there, all the way to the parts, to the test rig, to putting things together, making sure everything goes right. It’s everything from beginning to end.  

That’s another nice thing about a small company. It’s an opportunity to really see what works and what doesn’t work. A lot of times in engineering you do a design and you say: “This should go together really nice.” And then you find out that, for some reason, it doesn’t. When you know that, you can fix that on the next round or even on a revision if it’s not a major change. The theoretical work is great, but it’s really nice to be able to see what you make in reality, in hardware.  

In a small company, you get to do a little bit of everything. One of the things that are nice is being able to come up with a new product, a new design and take it to the end where you actually have it in your hand. It can be very rewarding to actually have something tangible at the end of the day. A lot of times, in a big company or maybe even on big projects, you do an aspect of the design. So an output of your day might be a whole lot of documentation. It's really not that rewarding to say: “Hey! Look at that Excel file. I did that.” it’s much more enjoyable to say: “Hey. Look at this motor. Here it is. Pick it up. See what it does.” 

With a small company, you don’t get stuck doing the same thing all the time. It’s nice to be able to use your range of experience and skills instead of just one aspect of it.  

What’s your process when it comes to engineering? Do you theorize and tinker at the same time, experiment, or is there an order of things you don’t deviate from?  

Typically, someone will say: “We need a motor to do such and such.” They’ll hopefully give me some other information such as the voltage, size, physical constraints for the application, etc. From there, I go to an Excel spreadsheet and I do some general calculations. “Is this set of requirements physically possible?” Then I come up with a preliminary design that I think is reasonable. From there, I do a finite element model.  

Finite element analysis is a tool for virtual prototyping. There is so much math happening inside the program that it’s a very good simulation of what will happen in real life. Kind of like if you made the part and tested it. You can do that using the computer. I use it for magnetic design. It breaks up the geometry and assigns material properties to all those regions. It has equations that determine what’s going on in very small portions of the model. So then collectively you can see how it all works. 

There are different versions of it that are used for vibration analysis, computation of fluid dynamic, etc. What that does is it lets you evaluate the effect of small differences in the design. You can do a lot of analyses in a short period of time, so when you finally do go to prototype there is a high confidence that it’s going to work.  

That’s the magnetic analysis part. The next thing would be to build all the physical parts around it. So that would be housing, the shaft, that kind of stuff. You have to have some idea what that’s going to look like in the beginning so that you know where you’re going to allow space and how big it can be and all that.  

Have you ever deviated from this way of working or has this always been the way you work? 

I think that’s the shortest path to success. Deviations are usually bad.  

You’re working on our pump motors. Can you say what interests or excites you most about them? How long have you been working on them? 

I actually designed the first prototype based on a set of constraints that we had. We’ve evolved those constraints, developed new requirements, and solved some big problems along the way. One problem we had early on was that the motor was very noisy. And it was. Some of the motors put out 90 dB, which is as noisy as when your team scores a touchdown. We got that down significantly. If it was running in the room while we were talking, you wouldn’t really care. You wouldn’t even need to raise your voice to talk over it. So that’s a huge success. That took some doing but we got there.  

The other thing we’re trying to do is to have a highly efficient motor. And we’re there too. When you do a design, you can optimise around a lot of different criteria. One of ours was high efficiency. In the design you ask: ‘What kind of magnet?’ ‘How big is it?’ ‘What’s the air gap?’ Geometry, thickness, etc. Every dimension has an effect on things. And you trade all of those to achieve the goal. As a result, we have probably the highest efficiency motor on the market. That’s exciting even from a technical perspective to have achieved that. But also from a business perspective. To think what can happen for the company. 

And knowing other things too. For example, California has some regulations as far as what the minimum efficiency of a motor drive system has to be to sell them in California. Historically, California has done stuff like that and then they gave everybody a pass on it when there is no solution. But when there is a solution, nobody gets a pass. So that should be really good for us.  

There are some big things that have to happen between now and then. The biggest is the certifications that allow you to sell the product at all. We are well along in this process. The first part of it is CE approval. We passed that in June so the next thing is the safety certification, which we’re expecting to start in the next week or so.  

We’ve built a portable test stand, so we can send it to the test lab, we’re in the process of commissioning it today. So that’s pretty exciting too. They review every aspect of the design, from the materials that you selected to the clearances between the components. And they will tell you if you’ve got it or not.   

Of course, we knew what those requirements were before we started, so they’re pretty much designed in. Is it possible that we missed something? Well, yes. But I’m not really that concerned about it. If they go through it and find something, we’ll correct it. But I’m really not expecting any problems.  

How many people are involved in this project? 

Four full time engineers, a lot of support from the lab, manufacturing, and other people. So about four to eight. And then we have the outside suppliers that are helping out.  

What projects are you most proud of when it comes to your career?  

There are a lot that I thought were pretty great. This pump project is among them though. It’s not just... OK, you can say: “It’s a motor for a pool pump. Big deal.” Well, the big deal is, when you go from 80% efficiency to 90% efficiency, you might think it’s 10% better. It’s actually 50% better. It’s half of the losses. That’s an achievement. When you’re running a pump, to take half of the wasted energy and not waste it, that’s a big deal.  

Less electricity needs to be generated, there is less heating of the environment, less fossil fuel or however else you make electricity... That’s not going in. And every drop in efficiency is basically heat that’s going into the environment, to the room, to the outside ambient... It’s going someplace. So now you’ve prevented it.  

It’s exciting from the global energy efficiency standpoint. What’s the impact? It remains to be seen. One motor won’t make a difference, but when you start putting thousands of them out there, maybe you’ll see something. That’s the goal. Save the planet.  

Is there anything you would still like to achieve in your job?  

You’ve never done it all. When I was working on the defense contracts, when people asked me: “What are you doing today?” I would say: “I’m doing my part to defend the free world.” My part was very small, but I was doing it. 

Now I’m doing my part to save the planet. It’s a very small part, but I’m doing it. I really would like to see this project be successful because I do think it will have an impact on the world. I think it will have far-reaching effects.  

Does it bother you when you see badly-engineered tech or is it a chance for you to think about ways to make it better?  

Oh yeah, it bothers me a lot. And I’m not shy to tell people. If it’s coming from a young engineer, they get a gentle nudge. Coming from an experienced person who really should know better, it’s maybe not so gentle.  

What would you recommend to young people interested in engineering?  

Find stuff you like, find your passion.  When I started out, I didn’t know it was my passion, but as I got more into it, it consumed a lot of my life and I’m very happy about it. It’s great, it really is.  

What do you need to be a good engineer?  

Creativity and the ability to imagine things that don’t exist yet.  

There are a lot of things about being an engineer that are tradable skills. You can take the math class, you can learn about mechanics, you can learn about electronics, you can learn about all of that stuff. You can see the equations, you can understand all of that. But to figure out how go from ‘we’ve got nothing’ and to visualize the steps—that's the key. You develop that. You find a lot of things that don’t work and a lot of things that do work. And you put them together.