About Us

Who are we?

Mike Dann		Mike attempts the general management and does product conceptualization along with some PCB design and layout as well as writing the firmware for many of the basic products. Mike has an MSc. Elec Eng from UCT in Cape Town and has been working at Danntech for far too many years.
Alexis Muya		Alexis (or our Alexa) started working with us as a Wits student about six years ago. Having completed his MSc. Eng degree, Alexis writes firmware in C, writes our product GUIs using Python, organises our newsletters and is working with a few of us building the new danntech.com website.
Robert Dann		Robert has an MSc. Elec Eng degree from Southampton University in the UK and along with firmware planning and system design, he also writes firmware. Robert has six years of experience and has been at Danntech SA for more than four years.
Ladi Kumirayi		Ladi Kumirayi Electronic Engineer Product Designer. BSc Elec Eng. Wits - Johannesburg. Ladi has been working with us as a student and now as a graduate for more than seven years. Running our aquaponics project with the development of instrumentation, Ladi does PCB layout for us and Pi code.
Michelle du Toit		Michelle runs the production, from customer order, purchasing to kitting for outside SMD assembly. Low volumes we build internally. Michelle keeps track of all the parts using our MRP system so we are able to cost our products and get a rough idea of delivery lead times for items “built to order”.
Marie Nealon		Marie has been with us for more than 10 years and manages customer orders, enquiries and the general office administration. If you call in you will be most likely to talk to Marie who also looks after Bigchess for us.
Ellen Bvuma		Ellen has been building Danntech products for 35 years! She has moved around with us through our various factory locations and can probably tell a story or two.
Rosemary Lebakeng		Rosemary has been with us for three years now and assembles our low-volume SMD PCBs which requires good eyesight and a steady hand.
Bridget Lebakeng		Bridget has been working with us for about 26 years, doing many and various jobs. Applying our product labels, serial numbers and packaging is her speciality, as well as keeping our workspaces clean. As a staunch Kaiser Chiefs supporter, she has regular disappointments!
Lorraine Lebakeng		Lorraine has just finished school and is helping us out with various jobs while the world settles down. She plans to go into childcare as her chosen profession.
McDee		McDee does all the heavy lifting for us ! Looking after our experimental fish pond, drilling and milling, to delivering giant chess sets.

 

What we do

Danntech in South Africa, manufactures and sells process control and instrumentation products as well as customized products for various customers. Over the years we have been developing a range of “standard products” in parallel with designing and developing customised and unique products.

We have tried to avoid the most common products that are widely available and developed products that have unusual or uncommon features which could be unusual or hard to find. However, we do have some of the more common products but they will have additional features which make them different from our competitors

It has been our goal over the years, to only sell products which we have designed and manufactured ourselves and not take on any agencies etc. So, our customers are able to talk directly to the designers and people making the products and purchase directly from us, the designer and manufacturer. It is unusual to buy anything directly from South African companies that make their own products. You generally have to go to a “craft market” to be able to do that. Especially rare for electronic products.

History

Danntech has been involved in the design and manufacture of various electronic products since 1986, for more than thirty-five years!

Mike has a postgraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cape Town. And, yes, we did start up in a garage, but failed to make it into the big-time like Apple and Hewlett-Packard, we are still working on that!

 

Mike started Danntech in 1986 after working at Mintek for four years doing research into measurements in the mineral processing industry and then spending a brief period designing military electronics.

Danntech’s first product was a dual pH controller designed for a specific customer application. Low voltage signals from high impedance sources combined with “close proximity” high current, reverse osmosis equipment provided many lessons for us.

The next product designed and manufactured was a DC to DC converter to be used in the automotive industry and then a chlorine dosing gadget for swimming pools. We formed alliances and did projects with various folks, mostly with moderate successes:

Phillip McInnes - doing the Vertex-1’s (DC to DC converters), Marc Jarchow - designing a concrete press controller, SME - with the paper folding machine automation, SME - doing the air-conditioning controller for the Mamba military vehicle, and many other ambitious projects that fortunately we can’t remember just now.

In the early days we did many test and measurement systems mostly using our own hardware with some bought out parts as required.

Our products and services

We offer a standard range of products which are available ex-stock or built to order and can be purchased on-line from this website. As well as our so-called “Standard Products”, we can offer the customization of any of our products.  

Customization of our products can pay off when an application requires some functions, typically more than one, where a “standard” product” is not available and some quantities could be required. As an example, we have a customer come to us requiring four different (and non-standard) signal converters/isolators with alarm/trip functions. We were able to design a four channel unit with alarm relays and serial communications which took up less space, replaced six individual modules at a reduced cost.

We are able to offer the following: Product Conception, Specification, Development, PCB layout, Enclosure Selection/Design, Mechanical Design, Firmware Development, Software Development, Manufacturing Documentation, Product performance Testing, Post Production Tests, Revision Management, Configuration/User Manuals, Sales Documentation, Pricing and Technical Support.

Our specialties include: Process instrumentation, scientific and laboratory electronic equipment design and development, rotary kiln temperature measurements, measurements in multiphase liquids, bacterial growth control systems, test and measurement systems.  

We presently have more than eighty products in production with hundreds of variants. Measuring froth thickness, mud-level, solar radiation, remote monitoring to the velocity of detonation of explosives.

Signal converters, current and voltage transducers, frequency/pulse converters, splitters and signal isolators form the more regular part of our production.

Our products have been shipped to more than 20 countries.

Over the years we have designed more than 500 different PCBs, many with multiple versions and updates. Almost all our PCBs have been designed using Altium with very many now using one or more embedded processors with the firmware written in CCS C and more recently Microchip C.

Product design philosophy

We have always tried to use high quality enclosures, screw terminals, PCBs and individual components. Nowadays there is now a lot of pressure to reduce costs by using lower cost raw materials. This poses some problems as with some quite common products European or American fabricated parts can be much more expensive than say similar products from Taiwan, India or China. We have always tried to produce top quality products which are suitable for export to first-world markets while keeping the costs reasonable. We remain mindful that often the cost of a failure of one of our parts can far exceed the value of lost production or the cost to replace or repair.

We have tried to avoid DIN rail enclosures that are very thin with terminals in-line going from front to back. Our preference is to allow space for airflow and easy terminal access with more practical wire access. With a wider style enclosure, we can design our labels to show what the module does, with some indication about the wiring and a unique part number. This means that it is generally not necessary to remove wiring and the module from the DIN rail to find out what is does and its part number.

Our product quality process

Wherever possible we only use original components and avoid sources where substituted parts can be supplied. A careful selection of parts, tolerances and specified operating temperatures can improve the reliability of any electronic equipment.

With most of our products, we purchase the components and PCBs and then send the kit out to a specialist surface mount facility where the automated assembly is done. The sub-assemblies are then returned to us for assembly of hand placed parts. After assembly we may do functional testing and put these parts not stock until an order is received. When a customer orders a part we will configure to suit and complete the final assembly, labelling, 24 hour burn-in and then final calibration before packaging and shipping.

We do sometimes keep some of our more popular products in stock for quick deliveries.

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Thanks for visiting our website and we look forward to serving you at any time or in the future.

Please contact Mike Dann if you would like any further information or have something that we may be able to assist you with.

+27 (0) 82 900 0575 or miked@danntech.com