Radek Salac

Department

Research & Development Department

Job Title

Head of Research & Development

INSTRUCTION LANGUAGES

English, Czech

PERSONAL BIO

During Radek Salac's professional career, he has gained extensive experience in various roles within the field of research and development, spanning over a total of 18 years.

In his current role as the Head of Research and Development at ATG, he was responsible for overseeing a wide range of activities and functions within the department. This included managing daily workloads and resources, as well as direct involvement in the R&D function from the establishment of the department. He played a pivotal role in determining the department's strategy, aligning it with the company's overall goals, and engaging in negotiations with clients to estimate costs based on their requirements. Additionally, he conducted feasibility studies of client-desired solutions and collaborated closely with other departments and research organizations. His responsibilities also encompassed delivering, designing, and implementing project solutions for both internal development and external company customers. He successfully acquired and administered development projects financed by public funds and ensured smooth oversight of the projects pipeline within the R&D department.

In addition to his managerial responsibilities, he actively participated in technical tasks, including programming and code review in various languages such as PLC, SCADA, SQL, Labview, and others. He also contributed to the design of technical, technological, and programming solutions and architectures. Providing professional and technical consultations, onboarding and mentoring interns and student associates, and assigning responsibilities were integral parts of his role.

Radek's key development areas included expertise in complex automatic technologies and equipment for Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) of materials, covering ultrasonic, magnetic particle, penetration, eddy currents testing, visual inspection, and digital radiography. He was also involved in vision system integration and the development of artificial intelligence methods for automatic evaluation of surface defects and indications for industrial applications. Furthermore, he played a significant role in the development and integration of automatic manipulation and robotic systems, including vision navigation based on artificial intelligence methods.

WORK EXPERIENCE AND AWARDS

Head of Research And Development, ATG, Czech Republic (2015-present)
Senior analyst and programmer (chief analyst of credit cards accounting system), GE Money Bank, Czech Republic (2010-2015)
PLC programmer, Lang und Peitler, Czech Republic (2008-2010)
Developer and programmer, ATG, Czech Republic (2001-2008)

Key Projects:

Automatic system for visual testing of bearings using machine learning methodology
Automatic ultrasonic manipulators for inspection of structural defects on composite materials
Autonomous robotic systems for ultrasonic and eddy current inspection of structural defects on metal and composite parts of complex shapes
Automated magnetizers for testing parts of complex shape by means of magnetic particle testing
Automated equipment for testing the quality of rotating parts of aircraft engines using the ultrasonic immersion method

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

Master in Material Engineering, University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague (UCT Prague), Czech Republic

VacancIES

Brief Introduction of the Department

Research& Development department has been established in 2016. Main goal of the department is to deliver comprehensive technology solutions and helps the ATG company to be a global technology leader in Non-Destructive Testing (NDT). Currently, the department activities are focused on fully autonomous NDT systems in accordance with Industry 4.0 principles, that are usually implemented to highly customized NDT devices, equipment and systems. Main focus of the company as well as the department is in magnetic particle testing (MT), ultrasonic testing(UT), visual testing (VT), penetrant testing (PT), eddy-current testing (ET) and radiography testing (RT) methods of NDT. These methods are various physics principles used to detect structural defects in industrial products (e.g.: airplanes, pressure vessels, cars …) that may endanger their safe operation, potentially causing financial losses or even losses on lives. Any of the above mentioned methods requires further development and integration of software, electronics, control systems, vision systems, manipulators, robotic systems, water managements, special components, self-diagnostics and calibrations systems etc. The R&D staff is specialized on various areas like programming of the desktop applications, control of PLC and the robotic systems, designing of the optical and vision systems, etc. All projects may be categorized as a highly applied research and development, having tangible outputs in real-life applications on the equipment for ATG´s customers from aerospace, railway, automotive, oil & gas and other industries.

Department Staff Number

5-10 people

Internship Job Description

The job is focused on experimental activities, measurement and optimization works related to development of unique magnetic particle testing (MT) testing devices (equipment), which uses magnetic field and special liquids bearing ferromagnetic particles to visualize invisible defects on the surface of tested products and components. Such MT device has several critical components, where the most important are based on

the system of magnetization (saturation of the ferromagnetic product by sufficiently strong magnetic field which (with using of special liquids) enables detection of invisible defects as cracks of the surface)
the electromagnetic field measurement devices (material structure testing applications)
the optical devices / vision systems (for autonomous surface defect monitoring)
the bin picking systems (loading products subject to the tests into the testing device from a box with randomly oriented products)

These components may be grouped in two main areas – electromagnetic applications tasks and vision applications tasks. Electromagnetic tasks include measurement of electromagnetic field and/or measurement of residual magnetism and/or eddy current material checking. Vision tasks include bin picking experiments and/or etalon verification and/or optimization of optical diagnostics functions. Based on the interest and background of the intern one, or both directions maybe subject to the internship.

Preferred Intern Education Level

Undergraduate students (third year and above)
Master students
Doctoral students

Preferred Intern Skill Sets or Qualities

Laboratory measurements and/or
Structural (mechanical) design and/or
Material science and metallurgy and/or
Electricity and magnetism and/or
Robotics and automation and/or
Vision / optical systems experience
English Level B2 as minimum and English Level C1 as significant advantage
Proof of level (FCE/CAE/IELTS/TOEFL or equivalent) is a significant advantage

Internship Period

From June 10 to September 1, 2024 (adjustable at the discretion of the organisation)

Others

Salaries (stipends) will be provided
Benefits will be provided (Accommodation is provided)

Brief Introduction of the Department

Research & Development department has been established in 2016. Main goal of the department is to deliver comprehensive technology solutions and helps the ATG company to be a global technology leader in Non-Destructive Testing (NDT). Currently, the department activities are focused on fully autonomous NDT systems in accordance with Industry 4.0 principles, that are usually implemented to highly customized NDT devices, equipment and systems. Main focus of the company as well as the department is in magnetic particle testing (MT), ultrasonic testing (UT), visual testing (VT), penetrant testing (PT), eddy-current testing (ET) and radiography testing (RT) methods of NDT. These methods are various physics principles used to detect structural defects in industrial products (e.g.: airplanes, pressure vessels, cars …) that may endanger their safe operation, potentially causing financial losses or even losses on lives. Any of the above mentioned methods requires further development and integration of software, electronics, control systems, vision systems, manipulators, robotic systems, water managements, special components, self-diagnostics and calibrations systems etc. The R&D staff is specialized on various areas like programming of the desktop applications, control of PLC and the robotic systems, designing of the optical and vision systems, etc. All projects may be categorized as a highly applied research and development, having tangible outputs in real-life applications on the equipment for ATG´s customers from aerospace, railway, automotive, oil & gas and other industries.

Department Staff Number

5-10 people

Internship Job Description

Generally, the job is focused on experimental activity, measurement, optimizations and partially programming works related to ultrasonic testing (UT). Ultrasonic testing NDT method uses propagation of sound on high frequency (usually >500kHz) and a set of their emitters and receivers and special liquid medium (couplant) to detect and characterize subsurface structural defects on metallic and/or composite products. Research and development activities are focused of automated ultrasonic immersion systems for testing of shaped composite structures for aerospace industry. The device consists of robotic system, special water circuit system, ultrasonic system with appropriate designed probe head, data acquisition synchronized system and control and data acquisition (DAQ) software. The development can be divided into the three main topics:

measurements (checking) of composite structures
optimization of water circuit system and water jet
programming new software functions

Measurements (checking) of the composite structures include checking of the material by several ultrasonic techniques, collection of set area scans, their comparison and evaluation. Optimization of the water circuit system and the water jet include testing of different water circuit configuration; design, simulation and experimental verification of water jet for laminar flow. Programming new software functions in National Instruments LabView development environment include the statistical function, the image processing functions, the result measurement features, etc. Based on the interest and background of the intern one, or more directions maybe subject to the internship.