Problem
A manufacturer of hobby metal detectors wanted to expand rapidly into production of security metal detectors but did not have sufficient in house engineering staff. They hired Alpha Omega to develop a hand held metal detector that met or exceeded the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Standards.
Solution
The NIJ Standards were extremely demanding, and far exceeded the capabilities of anything on the market. Alpha Omega began a research and development process that produced a patented breakthrough in hand held metal detector design that used a high resolution analog to digital front end to improve detector sensitivity and give stable operation over a 125°C operating range.
Our programming staff created the metal detector program in the unit. It operates at multiple levels of sensitivity, with multiple alarm volume levels, a silent vibrator mode and a battery monitor. The circuit board layout was tailored to the customer's automatic assembly capabilities. AO facilitated the process of getting FCC Certification for the product.
We also designed production line test equipment to streamline the production process. The equipment programmed the microprocessor and then performed a complete function test of every feature of the product. Our programming staff created the production line test software, including automatic production test data logging and test report generation.
Results
The hand held metal detector is the only product on the market that fully meets the NIJ 2003 standard. It operates without significant variation in performance between -40°C and +85°C, and at sweep rates from 0.05 meters per second to 3 meters per second, and will detect all of the NIJ and TSA test objects. The packaging is strong enough to survive being driven over by a large truck and the unit is rugged enough to serve as a defensive baton or club without degradation of metal detecting performance.
