Personal Projects

I always aim to learn something new every term related to engineering, be it co-op or study term. For instance, this term, I spent a lot of time learning about various communication protocols, especially the ones on the UW FE racecar. Over past terms, I learned about how differentials work, and built a model to actually see how it worked. I bought an arduino and played around with it. I learned lathing and milling from scratch, off of youtube and the warm hearts of the machine shop guys, and made some very cool chess pieces. I saw the need for FEA and practiced Ansys. It's always uphill if you're awlays learning and applying. 

Overall a very successful model (it works) - though I still don't fully understand how a diff works. 

• 3D printed the gears, lathed the axles from an aluminum rod, and drilled holes at precise locations with a mill.

• Performed solidworks FEA  on the gear teeth to see if a 3d printed gear would be strong enough, but mainly for fun practice.

• Attempted an Ackerman steering mechanism with a rack and pinion.

• Designed and manufactured a keychain in class,  also made an aluminum mini-table with threaded legs, a knurled stress toy rod, a rook and bishop. Manufactured 60+ parts for the UW FSAE team. 

• lathing - both aluminum and steel, advanced multi-directional lathing of chess pieces like a rook and bishop, drilling, parting tool, threading, both internal with hand taps or pneaumatic, external with a die, knurling, chamfering

• milling - edge finder, holes and slots, milled part of an aluminum electrical enclosure. Also used the mill to drill holes at precise lengths for my model differential axles. 

• sheet metal - used a sheet metal bender for UWFE aluminum walls for a test container, and a simple V set up for smaller pieces such as the pedal clevis guards. 

• 3d printing - managed two industrial Raise 3d printers and debugged them during my Sunglow industrial engineer co-op. Additional experience with FE's bambu printer, designed various things like gears, mounts, enclosures, joints, spring fits. Optimized 3D printed parts at Sunglow to reduce print times and support material by 20%.  

• lasercutting - lasercut MDF test lids for enclosures before waterjetting actual aluminum lids. Also lasercutt EPDM rubber gaskets to size. 

• Learned simple board design by making a 555 timer LED blinker in Altium and soldering it. 

• Made a LED cascading effect board in Altium, ordered parts from Digikey, yet to be soldered. 

• Soldered 10+ pcb boards for FE such as a vsense flex pcb, a charge cart unit board, and a wheel sensor board. 

For our first mechatronics engineering term, we had to team up in groups of 4 and make something cool using Lego Robotics. We chose to make an automated salad bar, like robotic Subway.