There’s
one in every class—a kid who draws ships and airplanes instead
of memorizing state capitals. Jeff Wood (T’77) still gets to design
things like destroyers, submarines, amphibious assault vehicles and
hovercraft, and he gets to see them built from his cutting-edge designs.
Plus, he works for a division of Boeing called Phantom Works in St.
Louis, Mo.
How
cool is that?
Wood
is something of a reluctant visionary. After high school he didn’t
think he wanted to go to college. “I really had no interest in
pursuing my education, so I declined my mother’s generous offer
to pay my way,” Wood remembers. “I proceeded to get one of
those exciting jobs as a stock boy at a local department store and then
a
job as a machine operator in a local factory. My attitude changed three
years later, when I found myself unemployed and with no
appreciable skills.”
Because
Wood enjoyed the drafting classes he took in high school, he enrolled
in Ferris’ Technical Drafting and Tool Design program. During the
winter of his last semester, he was standing with a friend in front
of a bulletin board in the Placement office. McDonnell Douglas Aircraft
was looking for a tool designer to work on F-15 fighter jets. “We
both had the same thought: ‘Wow! What a hot job that would be,
but we’re just a couple of country boys,’” Wood recalls.
“My friend walked away, but I didn’t. I proceeded to hand-write
my first resume.” It would be the only resume Wood had to submit,
because McDonnell Douglas contacted him with a job offer even before
he graduated.
On the
Bubble
Within
a week of graduating, Wood packed his bags and moved to St. Louis, Mo.
Two years later, layoffs caused Wood to take a hiatus from working on
jets. After eight years with Sunnen Products working on honing machines,
Wood got the chance to again work on his beloved aircraft. “No
company could peg the fun-o-meter as well as a company building fighter
jets,” Wood says. He went back to McDonnell Douglas Aircraft who
eventually got bought out by Boeing. He’s been there ever since.
Back
at McDonnell Douglas, Wood moved from tool design to learning aircraft
structures design. He worked on flight test aircraft for the Israeli
Air Force and then transferred into research and development—The
Phantom Works. Some of the projects have required Wood to obtain Secret
Clearance from the Department of Defense.
Today Wood’s major project is called Next Generation Transparency.
The NGT project is exploring new ways to design and manufacture aircraft
canopies—the “bubble” that a pilot sits under. Currently,
a flat sheet of acrylic is heat-formed into a mold and then hand-polished
to obtain an optically clear lens. Wood says the current process is
more of an art than a science, which accounts for why a canopy can cost
upwards of $300,000.
The
new approach Wood is pioneering is to make a frameless polycarbonate
canopy from an injection mold. One of the problems is how to attach
something without a frame to an aircraft. Wood compares it to trying
to hinge windows to open and close without a window frame. “Our
designs allows us to integrate latches and hinging right into the polycarbonate,”
he says, “so the only thing that opens is the ‘plastic’
itself.” Redesigning both the canopy and the manufacturing process
could drop the cost of canopies to a tenth of their current price.
The
project has made extensive use of rapid prototyping. The next generation
of designers studying at Ferris will have hands-on experience with this
3-dimensional drafting tool. A year ago the University acquired a $60,000
Stratasys Genisys, which converts computer-aided drafting images to
reality by depositing layer after layer of a white thermoplastic material
in ultra-thin layers as specified by the drawing. Wood’s old college
friend, and now Ferris professor Mark Hill, teaches the new technology.
“With this process you can press a button and go do something else
and when you come back, the part’s done,” Hill explains. Wood
used rapid prototyping models of the new canopy to impress Air Force
brass with project breakthroughs.
Breaking
the Mold
When
he’s not designing the core of a nuclear fusion reactor or an Unmanned
Combat Air Vehicle, which promises to be the future of air defense,
you might find Wood behind bars. For more than four years he has been
leading a Bible study group for prisoners. “They are the cast-off,
forgotten segment of our society that no one wants to see again,”
Wood says. “One day one of these men might end up being your neighbor,
and you’ll be glad someone took the time to care for them.”
It’s
just as likely, though, for Wood to be traveling in support of one or
the other of his high-tech projects. One of his most memorable trips
included being entertained by Finns at a company sauna on the Baltic
Sea. “Of course, no sauna is complete without jumping in the sea
afterwards,” Wood says. He calls going from stock boy to Phantom
Worker, “something of a fairy tale story.” Not that most fairy
tales end up in saunas on the Baltic Sea—only the best-designed
ones do.
