COSMOS helps minimize adverse effects of external vibration

Company Thermo Electron Corp. - Nicolet Industry Electrical/Electronics Location U.S.A. Product Used COSMOSWorks Type of Analysis Frequency More Details

The Challenge
Nicolet Instrument Corporation manufactures infrared and Raman spectrometers used in a wide variety of chemical analysis processes and procedures. Infrared spectrometers can be extremely sensitive to significant ambient vibration. To minimize the adverse effects of external vibration, Nicolet typically mounts its optical components to a heavy aluminum casting that acts as a base for the spectrometer.

In redesigning the base casting, Nicolet needed to make sure the new casting had no resonances in the frequency range that would be transmitted adversely to the optical detector.

The Solution
George Skupniewicz, Mechanical Engineering Manager for Nicolet, oversaw the redesign of the base casting. To make sure the new design matched the frequency response of the existing casting, Nicolet's engineers created a SolidWorks model of the old casting, and ran that design through COSMOSWorks to determine the theoretical first three natural frequencies.

COSMOSWorks has also saved Nicolet significant time in the design process and reduced time to market. "In the case of the spectrometer base, without having done the design analysis, we could have found problems with resonant frequencies late in the design process. This could have added weeks to our design cycle."

Summary and Metrics

• COSMOSWorks results were within 5% of the empirical value
• Reduced time to market
• Reduced learning curve allowed novice user to get meaningful results in just 2 days