Long PhanCV

Mechatronics Engineer · Ho Chi Minh City

Custom machines, and automation added to the equipment you already have.

I take the brief and do the mechanical design, automation design, PLC code and PC software myself, then see the system through commissioning. One person answers for how the parts fit together.

IEEE Senior Member20+ years in industryRemote, and on site anywhere in VietnamEnglish · Vietnamese
[email protected]See projectsGitHub
Long Phan
4
systems in production use
2
Vietnamese patents, 1 pending
6
disciplines integrated in one system
13
projects on this site, from prototype to production
Disciplines I integrate into one system
  • Mechanical design
    SolidWorks, FEA, gearboxes, sheet metal
  • Electrical & electronics
    Panels, sensors, battery packs, load cells
  • PLC & motion control
    Mitsubishi, Siemens, servos, cam tables
  • SCADA & industrial networks
    OPC UA, Modbus, Wonderware, IEC 62443
  • PC & web software
    Python, C#/.NET, databases, offline installers
  • Machine vision & AI
    Line-scan cameras, OpenCV, YOLO, OCR

What I do

One engineer across the whole machine

Most of my projects sit where several disciplines meet. That is where they tend to fail when three contractors split the work.

Retrofits

Automation, data or a vision check added to equipment already in service, without replacing it: valves stay buried, gearboxes stay in place, the SCADA stays read-only.

Special-purpose machines

Machines nobody sells off the shelf, from the first sketch to a working cell: frame, motion, sensors, PLC, PC application and operator screens.

Industrial software and vision

Line-scan and area cameras, OPC UA and Modbus links, alarm engines, edge PCs and offline installers that keep running without an engineer on site.

Selected work

Projects in service and in development

Open a project for photos, video and details.

Turntable car wash with a car on the turntable4
Patent VN 2-0003657 · open hardware

Turntable touchless car wash

The car turns on a turntable past four fixed spray columns: about twice the throughput of a standard in-bay wash.

Machine designPLCVision path planningOpen hardware
View project
Draymir on site, scanning an X-ray film3
In use since October 2025

Draymir: robotic X-ray film digitizer for NDT

A robot cell that takes radiographic films from a tray and scans each one at 24 µm per pixel, with no operator between films.

Denso SCARAMitsubishi QServoBasler line-scan
View project
3D model of the weighbridge with traffic lights, barriers and a truck on the deck3
In daily use since June 2026

Unattended truck weighbridge

A manually operated truck scale turned into a station that weighs, identifies and logs every truck with nobody on duty.

Modbus RTUOPC UAYOLOXPaddleOCR
View project
Live network map built from the plant AutoCAD drawing
Live map of 117 devices on two sites

SCADA audit and live network map

A full audit of a water plant's SCADA, and a live map that shows the health of every network device on the plant's own drawing.

WonderwareSchneiderAllen-BradleySiemens
View project
Spoken alarm dashboard with live values from the plant SCADA
Running since September 2026

AlertEye: spoken alarms on a legacy SCADA

Alarms that operators cannot miss: live values from the plant SCADA on kiosk screens and phones, with each alarm spoken aloud in Vietnamese.

OPC UAAlarm engineNeural TTSKiosk
View project
Inspection screen, pass and fail on each can
Deployed

Line-scan label inspection on a paint can line

A station on a paint can line that images each can through 360° and rejects wrinkled, misprinted or wrong labels.

Basler line-scanOpenCVMitsubishi MCSiemens S7
View project
Motor drive on a buried gate valve, inside its protective pipe3
Five prototype generations · patent pending

Motor drive for buried water gate valves

A battery motor drive that drops through the existing valve box onto a buried gate valve, so the street is not dug up.

SolidWorksFEAPlanetary gearboxLFP battery
View project
Servo drive on an Auma GK25.2 gearbox2
15 CNC parts ordered, December 2025

Clamp-on drive for Auma GK25.2 valve gearboxes

A servo drive that clamps to the pipe and turns an existing 2,000 Nm Auma gearbox at its input, so a water plant can motorise its valves without replacing the gearboxes.

Torque sizingFEAServoSolidWorks
View project
Retrofit housing on a Kent water meter3
Kent design went to mould tooling

Smart water meter retrofit housings

Housings that add an IoT reader to water meters already in the ground, without removing the meter.

3D scanningInjection mouldingSnap fitsIEC 60068
View project
Chain scanner for ultrasonic testing of small pipes3
Two machining batches, Aug and Sep 2024

Chain scanner for small-pipe ultrasonic testing

A redesigned chain scanner for ultrasonic testing of pipes OD 21.3–60.3 mm, with less joint play and an encoder module.

SolidWorksMechanism designEncoderNDT
View project
Ball-screw lifting stand for phased-array UT equipment
Delivered

Lifting stand for phased-array UT equipment

A ball-screw lifting stand that holds 50 kg of phased-array ultrasonic equipment at working height.

SolidWorksBall screwNDT
View project
Drill-powered tube push-puller2
Delivered

Drill-powered tube push-puller

A tool that feeds probe tubing using a cordless drill as its motor.

SolidWorksPrototypeNDT
View project
Portable motor operator on a sluice gate stand
Design

Portable motor operator for sluice gates

A battery motor operator that fits onto Rodney Hunt sluice gate stands, so gates can be opened without hand cranking.

SolidWorksGear driveBattery
View project

Credentials, patents and open source

Recognition and inventions

Professional membership

IEEE Senior Member

It requires at least ten years of professional practice, with significant performance over at least five of them.

In good standing through December 2026.

View certificate
  • Patent
    Turntable touchless car wash system
    VN 2-0003657 · open hardware, CERN OHL-W v2 · GitHub
  • Patent
    Water cleaning module for conveyor touchless car wash
    VN 1-0051197 · with Le Nguyen Han
  • Pending
    Remote motor coupling for buried gate valves
    Utility solution application No. 2-2024-00774
  • Open spec
    Universal communication method between vehicles and automated car washes
    CC-BY 4.0 · doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17051154
  • Open source
    Weld ROI Finder
    Finds the weld region on digitized radiographs with Segment Anything · Apache 2.0 · GitHub

Experience

Twenty years of building things

  1. 2025 – present

    Independent Mechatronics & Automation Engineer, Vietnam

    SCADA alarm and network-monitoring software and a SCADA audit for a water treatment plant; line-scan label inspection station for a paint factory.

  2. 2022 – present

    R&D Contractor, R&P Electronics

    Motor drive for buried gate valves, clamp-on drive for Auma gearboxes, portable motor operator for Rodney Hunt sluice gates, smart water meter housings, truck weighbridge retrofit and its software.

  3. 2024 – 2025

    R&D Contractor, Alpha NDT

    Draymir film digitizing robot, chain scanner for small-pipe UT, PAUT lifting stand, tube push-puller, RFID terminal.

  4. 2018 – present

    Co-founder & CTO, Spice Tune Company

    Personal R&D company: turntable car wash, vehicle-to-car-wash protocol, Weld ROI Finder, all released as open hardware or open source.

  5. 2012 – 2018

    Co-founder & CEO, Saigon Archive JSC

    Designed and delivered archive digitization systems for national and provincial archives in Vietnam.

  6. 2003 – 2009

    Vice Director, VT Company Limited

    Ran a smart card factory; delivered ticketing systems (POS, access control, turnstiles) for Vinpearl Nha Trang and Ba Na Hills.

  7. Earlier

    Software Engineer, Kasati JSC (VNPT group)

    Built the first private internet firewall in Vietnam and telecom billing software for VNPT An Giang.

Mechanical

  • SolidWorks: parts, assemblies, sheet metal, drawings for machining
  • Static FEA, gearbox and drive sizing
  • Injection-mould design, 3D scanning
  • CNC and fabrication sourcing in Vietnam

Automation and controls

  • Mitsubishi Q-series, GX Works2, QD77MS4 motion, MR-J4 servos
  • Siemens S7, Modbus RTU/TCP, RS-232/RS-485
  • OPC UA (KEPServerEX), Wonderware/AVEVA
  • Denso SCARA, load cells, weighing indicators

Software and vision

  • Python (FastAPI, asyncio), C#/.NET, CUDA
  • OpenCV, YOLO, PaddleOCR, Segment Anything
  • Basler line-scan cameras, encoder triggering
  • PostgreSQL, Redis, Docker, Linux edge PCs

Contact

Start a project

Send a short description of the equipment and what you want it to do. Photos, drawings or a tag list help. I reply with what is feasible, a rough budget and the first step.

Email meDownload CV

How I work

  1. 1A paid feasibility study: I look at your equipment, drawings or data.
  2. 2You get a system architecture, a parts list and a fixed quote before anything is built.
  3. 3Design and software work is remote. Parts are fabricated in Vietnam and shipped to you, with everything prepared so installation and commissioning can be supported remotely without trouble. Anywhere in Vietnam, I can also come on site.
  4. 4Handover includes CAD files, PLC and PC source code, an operator manual and an offline installer.