I’ve been running ATRL since 2019, when I finally left Nidec Motor Corporation for independence, after over 30 years as development engineer, R&D manager and latterly Technical Director (VP of Engineering).
My initial plan was to shift my focus from rotating electrical machines – industrial motors and their controls – to loudspeakers (the ‘speaker is of course still an electrical machine, just one that goes “in and out” instead of “round and round”. A linear motor, in other words.) Despite these initial intentions, my established career and contacts followed me to ATRL, and I found myself spending at least as much time helping people with the same sort of design tasks and problem-solving that I’d always been doing. These motor-centric activities have been as fascinating and challenging as ever, but don’t really fit under ATRL’s eponymous remit of “researching active transducers”. Hence my other trading name: “Active Power Consulting”.
Do I miss my former world of corporate business? The team, yes: working with (and in some cases managing) seventy-odd people was indeed mostly a pleasure. The corporate environment, and the sometimes small-minded office politics that went with it – not a bit!