Other Projects
Aluminum Casting
Homemade furnace
My father and I made the furnace from 100% reused materials. It runs of used motor oil. The oil is atomized and mixed with forced air in the tapered tube section and blown into the combustion chamber. The heat generated and large insulated cabinet allows for melting around 10 kg of aluminum.
Lost Wax Casting
After creating an object to be cast out of wax, we place it in a mold frame and pack greensand tightly around it. After packing with sand, we place the mold a bag and flood it with CO2 to set the sand. Once the sand has set, we preheat the mold in the furnace. There are two primary advantages to preheating the mold. Firstly it removes the wax cleanly, leaving a clean void for pouring. Secondly, when the sand is at high temperatures, the shrinkage as the aluminum solidifies can be minimized. Finally, the molten aluminum is poured into the preheated mold to generate the final piece.
Pyrotechnics Guild International
Rocket tooling
A hydraulic press with a bulletproof glass blast shield is used to compress "Whistle Mix", into a tube around a spindle using specialized rams
Explosively decoupled two-stage rockets
Left: "1lb" test rocket with "1/4 lb" second stage.
Right: 2x "3lb" competition rockets with "1lb" second stage
Launch of two-stage test rocket
The decoupling is marked by the rapid acceleration and change in pitch
All work with reactive materials was conducted at the Pyrotechnics Guild International Class B manufacturing tent in full compliance with the BATF
Freshman Engineering Project
RCWL-0516
An off the shelf motion sensor using X-band RADAR was used to keep project costs low.
Testing possible modifications
The factory outputs of the chip are on or off, an analog input of an Arduino attaching directly to a pin on the main IC yielded a much more responsive analog signal.
Preliminary shielding test
One of the main issues we faced with the RCWL-0516 is that is senses movement in a roughly 3m sphere. This sensing area was incompatible with our goal: detecting a small movement through a wall, while the system was in a crowded room. An aluminized Mylar pretzel bag was used to cut down on interference from movement outside of the target area.
Final shielding design
The lessons learned in the preliminary shielding test were used to create a laser-cut final enclosure. The final enclosure created a more aesthetically pleasing system and allowed the unit to function in a crowded space with minimal interference.
The sensor system was ultimately able to detect a small movement, an object about 4 cm2 moving 2 cm linearly back and forth, through about 20 cm of solid concrete.
Truss Project
Tasked with supporting a bowl in a larger circular hole using the least materials and individual members; our group created a minimal frame and the simulated load to be applied. Using finite element analysis, we added supports to areas experiencing high stress and displacement, creating a sturdy frame with minimal material use.