Manufacturing & Fabrication Coursework

During my undergraduate, I completed the following design, fabrication, and manufacturing relevant courses:

INTEREGR 160 - Intro to Engineering Design // This course provides the incoming freshman with an overview of engineering based on a "hands-on" experience with a client-centered engineering design project, which includes: 1) a team-based design project, 2) a survey of engineering disciplines, and 3) an introduction to computer tools and lab techniques.

ART 334 - Wood Working // Exploration of wood as a medium for constructing creative and functional three-dimensional forms.

ART 534 - Advanced Wood Working // Development of advanced concepts and techniques in wood-based funtional and/or fine art forms.

ME 313 - Manufacturing Processes // A quantitative and qualitative study of manufacturing processes including machining, forming; welding, and casting for metals; and extrusion, injection molding, thermoforming, and blow molding for plastics. Emphasis on process selection for optimum design. Laboratory experiments and demonstrations. Quality, strength, and economic evaluations.

ME 314 - Manufacturing Fundamentals // An introduction to techniques for modeling in materials processing and improving decision making in increasing the productivity of design and manufacturing processes. Quality improvement and engineering simulation tools are presented as well as the methods of engineering economy and the role of manufacturing automation and systems, through lectures and laboratories.

COMP SCI 699 - Directed Study // I used this directed study to build a electromechanical suspended wall plotter using a lathe, laser cutter and mill, shown here.

ME514 - Rapid Prototyping & Advanced Manufacturing // Rapid prototyping (RP) has emerged as a popular manufacturing technology to accelerate product creation. This novel manufacturing technology enables the building of parts that have traditionally been impossible to fabricate because of their complex shapes and the variety in materials.

ME601 - Design & Prototype Fabrication // The focal point of all lectures and labs is a semester long project. Lectures cover principals of design, manufacturing and prototype evaluation. Students will perform a re-design of a thermo-mechanical device using knowledge/skills acquired both through this course and previous course offerings in thermal sciences, mechanics and dynamics, manufacturing, and design. The lab component provides students with instruction and hands-on experience using the manufacturing tools/processes available in the College of Engineering. In addition, during the lab the students will apply the concepts of the lectures to the fabrication of the semester project. Each student constructs his or her own device during the course of the semester. This course provides a complete engineering experience by combining design, dimensioning and tolerancing, manufacturing and quantitative analysis in a single semester project.  [I believe this is the right course description]

Fabrication Experience & Facilities

I have worked and been a member in various shop and fabrication facilities over the last 10 years. Here is an overview on my relationship with each:

1. UW Madison Engineering Shop [2009-2013] // During my undergraduate I was formally trained on the full extent of the machine shop through formal demonstration, online quizzes and machining tests, including extensive hand tools, milling, turning, welding and basic hand coded CNC milling.

2. UW Madison Art Department Wood Shop [2011-2013] // Additionally during my undergraduate, I had the opportunity to take coursework in the Art Department taking furniture design courses. I was taught a number of wood working techniques and ultimately, took a position as a shop monitor overseeing the shop and helping students with their projects.

3. Wisconsin Institute for Discovery [2013]// My senior year I received a fellowship to work on a mechatronics project in the Fabrication Lab at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery under the mentorship of Ben Recht.

4. Sector67 [2011-2015] // Sector was a hackerspace that I was a member at for 4 years while I lived in Madison. The facility housed a wide range of machines from mills, lathes, 3D printers, to a CNC plasma cutter and CNC knitting machine.

5. Otherlab [2012] // Easily the greatest shop of which I have ever been apart. During the week I would work on various R&D projects like hybrid electric cargo tricycles and inflatable vehicles, and at night I would work on side projects on their 1000W 4’x8’ laser cutter and 4’x4’ water jet cutter that could slice through 0.75” aluminum plate like butter.

6. Design Concepts / Swope Design Solution [2013-2019] // For the past 6 years, I have been working as a product designer and mechanical engineer in which hands on prototype and fabrication has been a huge part of my process. The mill, lathe, laser cutter, silicone and TPE molding presses and a multitude of other tools have been regularly employed to facilitate my process.

7. School of Visual Philosophy [2018] // In the interest of gaining exposure to TIG welding, I took an overview course at the SoVP which helped me refine and learn new skills in various types of welding.

[Feel free to click on one of the links below to get a better sense for each facility]

[Unfortunately because of the confidential nature of my previous work, there is nothing relevant that I can publicly share]

Personal Projects

Here is a breakdown of some of my prototype and fabrication projects broken down into their discipline:

Woodworking

Machining & Welding

Mills and lathes are pretty standard tools in my engineering and design tool box. Below are just a couple examples of larger projects that I have documented involving me turning and milling, but these processes are core to my fabrication experience.

ReCycle Clock

Machined and welded steel clock.

CNC Machining

I have had experience working with CNC fabrication inyp a variety of manners from lasers to routers to water jet cutters to pcb mills. I have written firmware for CNC controller, built GCode generators and worked with HSMWorks to CAM tool paths to run on the table top mill that I built. Here are a couple of the projects I have worked on that involve CNC.

Wheelchair Slide Prototype

During my undergraduate capstone course, we build a prototype of a wheelchair accessible slide using a Stinger CNC router.

Custom Built Syringe Printer / FDM / PCB Mill

Recycling the gantry from an old Stratasys FDM, I built a syringe based 3D printer which eventually turned into a more traditional FDM then pen plotter and eventually evolved into a table top PCB Mill that I used to build circuit boards.

Hangbot

During my undergraduate, I disassembled an open source table top CNC router and rewrote the firmware and build the hardware for a suspended wall plotter. Additionally, I built some software tools that created GCode to drive the device to draw an entire image using a single line segment.

Lots of Lasers!