Paul Salzer has Knack for Scanning & Service

In one of Paul Salzer’s favorite cartoons, a mother takes her young son to the doctor after he disassembles the family’s TV, clock and stereo and re-assembles them into a ham radio set. The doctor somberly diagnoses the boy with “The Knack,” and pegs him as a future engineer. It’s a depiction Paul finds relatable.

“As a kid, I always enjoyed taking things apart and tinkering in the garage. I would build bike jumps and go-carts from scrap pieces of wood and roller blade wheels,” recalls Paul, an Application Engineer at IIA’s Minnesota lab. “I’ve always had ‘The Knack.’”

To no one’s surprise, Paul left Cold Spring, Minnesota, to study Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota Duluth. While pursuing his degree, he gained hands-on experience working as an intern at a carbon fiber composite shop that manufactured products like tubing and softball bats.

After earning his degree, Paul began working as a field engineer in the oil and gas industry. Later, he took a role as a design engineer for an auto part manufacturer (a job that fueled his obsession with turbo Subarus.)

Paul first became intrigued with laser scanning while working as a design engineer at an architectural railing company.

“The company made a lot of curved guardrail and railing on unique staircases and balconies, so they decided to get a laser scanner to help measure as-built conditions. I volunteered to take on that job, and that’s how I got into the laser scanning world,” says Paul, whose memorable assignments involved scanning staircases and other mounting points in new sports stadiums across the United States.

“I was intrigued by the laser scanning and CT (computed tomography) scanning technologies,” recalls Paul. “It was exciting to be part of this up-and-coming industry.”

In 2021, Paul brought that enthusiasm to Industrial Inspection & Analysis, when he joined our ISO-accredited lab in Minnetonka, Minnesota.

A helpful and easy-going guy, Paul works closely with customers to figure out the best technology to meet their needs. He then performs laser and computed tomography (CT) scans, as well as reverse engineering, on a wide variety of parts.

“We’re laser scanning everything from large castings to medical devices to plastic injection molded components. We can laser scan anything a customer can ship or deliver to our lab,” says Paul. “Most of the scans are done for metrology (measurement) purposes. We measure individual features to confirm that a part was manufactured as designed and is within tolerance.”

In some cases, the customer needs Paul to start with an existing part and work backwards into a design that can be used to reproduce that part. As he explains:

“Reverse engineering is helpful when you have a part that’s failed, or an old legacy part that doesn’t have any documentation, or when you’re working on new products that need to interface with something you don’t have data for.”

Paul is also quick to point out some lesser-known uses for CT scanning machines.

“The cool thing with a CT machine is that it can also do a lot of non-destructive testing (NDT) work, which complements what IIA is doing in our radiography labs for flaw detection,” he says. “We can use a CT scanner to do a porosity analysis and create a 3D image of the part that shows voids or inclusions and also provides exact volumes for those voids, which is pretty cool technology.”

With diverse projects and quick turnaround times, every day offers up a unique challenge for Paul — from reverse engineering helicopter parts to scanning golf carts. In one of his more unique assignments, Paul scanned what scientists believed to be the fossil of a baby T-Rex dinosaur.

“Working with these cutting-edge technologies is fun and interesting,” says Paul. “The big draw for me is the variety. There’s always something new to learn and we’re always trying to improve what we’re doing, and that’s rewarding.”

True to form, in his free time Paul still tinkers in the garage (though he’s progressed from go-carts to turbo Subarus). He also enjoys mountain biking and skiing. When he’s not at the lab or in the garage, you may find Paul in an airport. His wife works for an airline, and the couple has used her travel perks to see the world. To date, Paul’s favorite destinations are New Zealand and “underrated” Iceland.

As someone who works with aerospace parts and spends a lot of time on planes himself, Paul is keenly aware of the role laser scanning plays in making the world safer.

“Safety is always an aspect of the engineering industry. It’s understood that whatever you’re manufacturing is probably going to be used by a human at some point. That’s a big responsibility as an engineer to keep that in mind,” says Paul.

“What we’re doing here at IIA is an aspect of that. We’re helping customers verify that their parts aren’t going to fail when somebody’s using them, and that’s really important.”