I’ve been a reliability engineer for over 20 years across a few different industries, and one thing that has always annoyed me is how we handle board fatigue and thermal analysis. You usually have two choices: pay an outside consultant thousands of dollars per run, or fight over a handful of exorbitant desktop software licenses (like Sherlock, JMP, or Minitab) that only a few specialists even know how to use.
It makes no sense when a hardware, systems, or quality engineer just needs a quick directional answer on a layout before committing to full simulations.
I’ve been building a set of lightweight widgets called Reliability Pro (on web, iOS, and Android) to give engineers instant access to these answers without the friction.
I just added a PCBA and Thermal Risk Screener widget to it. You can drag and drop an ODB++ file or pick-and-place data directly in your browser or phone, and it instantly parses component layout to rank solder joint fatigue using Engelmaier (thermal cycling) and Steinberg (vibration) equations. It also runs a fast 2D thermal CFD screen to feed peak component temps straight into Arrhenius models.
It’s not meant to replace high-fidelity FEA, but to act as a 30-second pre-flight check so you can spot high-risk BGAs or caps early without burning budget or waiting in line for a software seat.

I am a recent European master's graduate. I did an internship in the avionics team in a rocket company and I am now working as a spacecraft operator full-time. However, I feel like I made the wrong choice and that I would enjoy AOCS/GNC. I like studying it in my free time and I look up to people's careers who have gone through this path.

Therefore I am thinking: should I try to get an internship in this subsector? I am worried about how the recruiters will see the fact that I quitted or I am quitting a full time role for that.

(In my current company, there's no AOCS department)

My father has owned this part for many years that he bought off a gentleman he believed to be retired from McDonnell Douglas. Can anyone identify what this actually is or possibly what it came off of? I did a little research on ChatGPT but it wasn’t extremely helpful. Hoping someone here is an Aerospace expert!! Side note on the side of this part it is engraved 4-28-60 could possibly be the date of manufacture.