David L. Formenti, Sage Technologies, will be the featured speaker at the September 18 meeting of the Santa Clara Valley Control Systems Society. He will discuss an approach for troubleshooting structural dynamics problems as they relate to servo controlled mechanisms.Measurement techniques will be discussed and illustrated for the measurement of operational and structural dynamic characteristics for the purpose of diagnosing vibration problems. Formenti will then demonstrate Frequency Response Function measurements and how one can interpret them for an understanding of structures modes of vibration.
David Formenti has been working at Sage Technologies for the last four years as a sales engineer covering Northern California and Nevada. Prior to Sage, he was the applications engineering manager for Data Physics Corporation responsible for customer support, training and software development project management.
Previous to Data Physics he held various engineering and management positions at GenRad's Structural Test Products Division (Spectral Dynamics). He was a co-founder of Structural Measurement Systems (SMS), a producer of noise and vibration analysis software for 10 years. From 1976 to 1979, he was at Hewlett Packard where he was the main product development engineer for the HP5423A, the company's first structural dynamic analyzer.
Most of his practical experience comes from the GM Noise & Vibration Laboratory as a project engineer. Throughout his career, he has had the opportunity to learn from engineers and technicians while lecturing around the world on structural analysis, digital signal processing, and vibration control. He has a BS in metallurgical engineering and an MS in engineering mechanics from Michigan Technological University.
When they had the Structural Dynamics Analyzer set up with all the associated amplifiers, cables, etc., somehow they drove the test setup with the "pink noise", and stored the response in the memory of the SDA, which was automatically subtracted from the final data.