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About SPR

James Capelle has over 20 years of mechanical design and fabrication experience. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from UC Santa Barbara, and has been working professionally as a mechanical engineer since 2006. The majority of his skill sets have come from learning through doing and problem solving in real world situations. He is very hands on and it has served him well in both physical competencies, and has also fed back and shaped how he approaches new designs. 

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Work Experience

2021-Current

Senior Mechanical Engineer

Safe Laboratories

(Santa Barbara, CA)

  • Dynamic vehicle crash testing, inverted drop testing, component level testing and analysis

  • Design and fabricate integrated rollover protection structures into existing automobiles

  • Design, fabricate, and test FUPS (Frontal Underrun Protection System) for large commercial trucks

  • Fire propagation analysis and mitigation

  • Instrumentation for testing including accelerometers, load cells, linear and rotational potentiometers

  • Design impact-stable mounting fixtures for high speed cameras

  • Design and prototype novel safety systems for future vehicles

  • Define and procure shop equipment

  • Maintain equipment to ensure minimal down time

  • Mentor junior engineers and fabrication / assembly team

2014-Current

Senior Mechanical Engineer

SPR Engineering

(Santa Barbara, CA)

  • Bring ideas from concept to functional prototype for small startup businesses

  • Production volume design / DFM 

  • Oversight of manufacturing processes and quality control (US and overseas)

  • BOM management for assemblies of 400+ unique part numbers 

  • Build proof of concept models for patent applications

  • 3d printed prototypes

  • Sheet metal design and fabrication

  • Machining of milled and lathe turned parts

  • Injection molded plastic and thermoformed plastic part design

  • Cast aluminum part design

  • Mechanical packaging of hand held electronic devices

  • Creation of jigs and fixtures for manufacturing and quality control

  • Manage design schedules and production schedules

  • Analyze tolerance stack up during the design phase

  • Manage QC inspection process

  • Manage rework procedure for out of spec parts

  • Vintage racecar restoration

  • Racetrack transportation, mechanical support, and driver coaching

  • Installation of automotive data acquisition systems

  • On track datalogging and post-race analysis

2005-2014

Mechanical Engineer

Special Technologies Laboratory

(Santa Barbara, CA)

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  • Rapid prototyping of rugged electronics enclosures

  • Extensive use of SolidWorks for design (3d modeling), analysis (FEA), and documentation (2d part drawings, assembly drawings, BOM parts lists)

  • Used SolidWorks PDM software for document control

  • Constant interface with PCB designers, machinists, and assembly team

  • RF antenna packaging

  • Mill spec connectors

  • Optics packaging

  • Environmentally sealed, IP rated enclosures

  • Hardware selection for strength, corrosion resistance, and ease of assembly

  • Designed and built a gimbal mounted LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) system​​

  • Designed a chemical release system using SolidWorks for modeling, COSMOSFloWorks for both internal and external flow analysis, and COSMOSWorks for stress and vibration analysis

  • Designed test procedures to validate system performance, then assembled, instrumented and tested the system to compare the modeled results to these empirical results

  • Designed a mounting fixture to hold a 100lb. tungsten instrument under an estimated 100G load in a high energy physics experiment

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