Skills (ALWAYS in progress)

Here is a picture of an aluminum engine cradle for a gyrocopter that I welded, as well as my first time welding stainless exhaust tubing which went alright.

I have been 3D printing since 2014, from patterns and jigs, to improvised machining methods like shown above. (machining an EGR passage using a hand drill and hardened drill bushing)

I have experience with using jigs, softjaws, and torque wrenches to make those parting lines disappear on pieces requiring multiple setups.

I've used Solidworks FEA and Microsoft Excel to simulate assemblies containing "soft" components like brake master cylinders, to optimize structure such as this "tapered flange" I-Beam style billet aluminum brake pedal.

I have experience in creating subassemblies and working in subassembly mode of Solidworks to quickly and efficiently make parts that work together and automatically update each by referencing common dimension variables.

I use manual processes when tools aren't readily available, such as threading the large diameter internal and external fine thread features of these master cylinders.

Optimizing and automating manufacturing is one of the fields I'm particularly interested in. Above is a picture of a device I made for my senior design project to hot-air weld a 70 ft long vinyl tube with a lap seam. While it was a crude 1-afternoon angle grinder project, it did the job.

For the 2nd tube we had to make, I modified the lap seam welder to be mobile with a few skateboard bearings, and ran it upside down to give a mounting surface for the heat gun and keep the motor out of the hot tube. This let us skip the arduous task of maneuvering the stiff fabric into a tube form as it went into the welder, and made the whole process far less labor intensive - now requiring just 2 people and taking about an hour, rather than 3-4 people for 4 hours.

 When the Baja SAE racing team got a load of EDMed drivetrain parts that didn't fit after heat treatment, we needed it fixed. After some research, I decided that ECM was a good process for the materials we had on hand, and set up a rig with some lab power supplies as a proof of concept. After 1.5 hours, it worked! The part above fit the CV joint spline, surviving 2 competitions so far and lots of practice.

To further develop the process, I hooked it up to the TIG welder ground clamp and torch as an adjustable higher current power source, and new electrodes were made for reducing the external splines as well. Heat shrink and/or electrical tape pieces were used to mask off areas to correct the noticeable 0.0005 inch per inch taper they had acquired as a result of the sinker EDM process.

In the last couple years I've learned how to design PCBs using KiCAD and order from rapid prototyping companies such as JLCPCB for more reliable and professional results than wires soldered to perfboard. The above is the circuit board for my senior design project. 

I've been machining for real (not just 3D printed jigs) since 4 years ago, and drawings are critical to knowing how to machine parts. These years of experience have given me the knowledge of what extra dimensions I need to add to avoid more math at the machine for finding tool offsets and other useful numbers.

I started programming Arduinos when I was in 7th grade after taking a weekend project class, where I learned how to make an erector set robotic arm follow the motions of my own arm with flex resistors, and even got into calculating moving averages to make it not so jerky.

Since then, I've used them in many places such as temperature control, automation with motors and switches, and especially analog data acquisition.

More recently I've been learning the higher-performance side of Arduino programming, utilizing hardware interrupts and direct port manipulation for the absolute lowest latency.

Designing from first principles often involves free body diagrams and basic, but lengthy and compounded equations. Putting them into excel enables easy iteration to adjust everything from the RPM outputs of a gearbox to within half a percent of any desired speed, to getting the Hertzian contact stresses of a pinched roller clutch under control.

Sheetmetal is a wonderful material to work with. While it may not always be the most accurate, the ease of toolpathing and rapid cutting and assembly means an idea can go from concept to tested in the same day, even for things where 3D printed parts won't cut it.

While I'm not ASE certified, I took 3 years of shop class in high school where I learned to replace engines, their accessories, precisely inspect part tolerances and wear, as well as do a top end rebuild on my own car about 30,000 miles ago which is still going strong.