In September of 2020, I was the third mechanical engineer on the product development team. Our standard cell was the size of a tupperware, and nothing had been built at scale. At the time, the biggest risk to our product was scaling the height of the battery to the full meter the product requirements demanded, and the riskiest electrode to scale at this height was the air cathode.

 

The first thing I built was a PVC pipe stack to test the air cathode under full hydrostatic pressure, and since then I've grown to own the air cathode assembly for the product.

In this role, I am responsible for concept generation to execution of machined and injection molded parts that integrate the cathode active material into the complex electrochemical assembly that comprises a cell in our battery system. 

 

I work with the cathode R&D team to determine requirements for the active material, the systems team air delivery at the enclosure level, and engineers on the cell and module teams to make sure our parts fit and assemble well together. 

Much of the design is protected IP, but this page shows my design experience ranging from rapid prototyping to low-volume production. These are parts that have different features for specific purposes and are manufacturable at the scale they're intended for.