About Us
About Us
Lecky Engineering comes from a long history of startups associated with our Founder and CEO, Ned Lecky.
Ned holds a BS in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University where as a student he developed electronics and firmware for controlling model train layouts and custom parallel processing hardware used by NASA in solving problems in fluid dynamics. His first job was developing machine vision algorithms, motion control, and robotic guidance firmware including complete UX system for the Control Automation Interscan 1500, one of the first automated visual printed circuit board inspection systems ever created. He wrote all system software and led the deployment of these systems at Northern Telecom in 1984 and has been involved with factory automation, robotics, and machine vision ever since.
Ned designed all of the electronics and control systems for a custom CNC burner tube drilling machine for Blodgett Oven in 1987. Since then, he's learned quite a bit about better machine design and has worked at multiple levels of electromechanical design and software on complete manufacturing lines at major manufacturers worldwide, including a custom 10-cell line producing railroad wheel sets in Inner Mongolia.
Ned received an MS and PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering while building Intelec Corporation where he invented and wrote the Sherlock Vision System Software. His product went through a series of acquisitions and is still sold by Teledyne DALSA today. During the Intelec days, the company built and deployed vision and robotic solutions for a variety of companies such as Intel (electronics assembly and inspection), IBM (vision-guided robotic wafer handling and wafer inspection/OCR), Kimble Glass/Corning (glass manufacturing and thread inspection), Chrysler Corporation (robotic systems integration), American Lock (key inspection), General Ribbon Corporation (toner cartridge wiper blade inspection), Sara Lee Hosiery (garment inspection), Packaging Corporation of America (injection molding and bagging inspection), Micron Technology (memory chip custom high-speed OCR), and dozens more.
In the 2000s, the company got involved in developing pharmaceutical inspection products (Innovation Associates) and several systems for transportation inspection (Nascent Technology, Duos Technology, Elsag NA). Ned also took on various roles for Mechanical Technology (embedded electronics, test systems, and firmware design for fuel cell systems), GE Global Research (real time embedded systems, high-efficiency power conversion electronics, MRI system safety control design, and FPGA design for nuclear isotope detection), Optiwind (control system electronics and firmware for wind turbine control), and Niles-Simmons-Hegenscheidt (railroad maintenance CNC equipment engineering management, integration, and vision code).
From 2013 to 2021, Ned was an engineering design and innovation leader at Amazon, Microsoft, and Google where he led confidential projects that use machine vision, robotics, general automation, and complex cloud and user-interface software to automate processes in Amazon fulfillment, sort, and receive centers and Microsoft and Google data centers. While at Amazon, Ned led design and deployment of ten large Fanuc-based robotic work cells, wrote system control and UI code for many of the cells, and received the prestigious Door Desk Award for the design of an inbound inspection and sortation system that is used extensively throughout the Amazon fulfillment network today.
In addition to extensive consulting and "CTO-for-hire" work, Ned is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at State University of New York Plattsburgh.
Today, Lecky Engineering uses all of the experience gained from working with so many different companies in so many different industries on such diverse projects to help clients navigate the complex and evolving world of robotic automation and machine vision.
Our Wheelhouse:
High-level concept through low-level design/prototyping to functional proof-of-concept systems
with all the mechanics, electronics, algorithms, and software needed to make them work.