Projects

The Thermo-Electric chair was designed as a personal heating and air-conditioning unit that was built into a standard office chair. My responsibilities on the design team was manufacturing and CAD engineer. In order for the pieces to be manufactured, I had to make an assembly of all the parts using SolidWorks and provide engineering drawings for the  pieces. I learned the importance of delegating tasks to make deadlines and how to effectively work with teammates to complete tasks. When components for the heat ex-changer were bought it was a challenging task to design a housing for the unit that fit underneath the chair. This was another learning experience with constraints such as time and budget.

My current employer tasked me with constructing a testing machine for their product under a tight budget. I re-purposed a sewing machine to provide the lateral motion. I had full responsibility in developing the machine and sourcing parts. I learned self- discipline in product design, budgeting, and project organization. 

In Mechatronics, the goal of the project was to fabricate a autonomous robot that can find IR targets in a maze and shoot at the targets accurately. I was the projectile systems engineer for the project, which tasked me with programming the tracking of the targets on an sbRIO that is a LabView micro-controller platform. I gained knowledge with working with LabView and using a laser-cutter to manufacture the projectile platform and shooter. I had to learn to accurately measure in order for the assembly to fit together well. 

As a 4 person group, we were tasked with developing a STEM related kid's toy. With advanced knowledge with Arduino software, I helped build the circuit building game that taught kid's about circuitry. We only had a few weeks to produce a working product which taught me important lessons in working under pressure. I also had to sort my priorities in order to meet my deadlines. 

The most current and final project for Innovation and Invention was a student picked topic. I wanted to be a part of a project working with renewable energy. My responsibilities for the  a river based water turbine was data analysis, making a theoretical model for the turbine, and designing a housing for the turbine. I was the project lead and I tried to be a part of every mini project to provide assistance. I individually worked on the theoretical model which I learned to search for resources to determine the appropriate equations for the turbine. This involved me in making educated assumptions about the model and producing a design for the product. 

This project was an individual project developed in my special topics course. We had to design and build a dynamic project with dynamic being the only stipulation. I am really proud that I could research, design, prototype, and build my own creation. I created a blog about the process Mechanical Buffalo Blog

My responsibilities for this project was test engineer. I had to develop a model for key components of the bike that could break due to fatigue. An important lesson was learned when creating the mounting plate for the drill. I forgot to account of the torque on the plate and during test had the plate bend. It was a fixable mistake and taught me to recheck my work  and if possible have a peer check as well. 

The two projects to the left are representations of my ability in a solidworks program. The pen being a model of a typical pilot G2 pen and the car body being a car development project for class.