Projects

My first engineering project as a lead was for the design, construction, and testing of a wing drag rake to supplement performance testing on the Nixus Project. I'm most proud of developing the communication architecture we used to wirelessly receive data from the wing-mounted drag rake while in the cockpit and for leading the wind tunnel testing and data analysis we used to assess our drag rake's measurement performance.

My biggest project working at SPACE Lab was leading the sizing, design, procurement, manufacture, assembly, and testing of a -80 C-capable cooling shroud and beam dump for one of our chambers. The collective shroud and beam dump allow us to test EP thrusters up to 3 kW while ensuring the cryo pumps, chamber, and other sensors are not damaged by the heat and particle flux from high-powered propulsion testing. -80 C also allows some thermal vacuum testing, which is quite useful for a space lab.

While working in the Aero Astro machine shop at UW, I was tasked, along with some fellow student assistants, to design and build some bench-top wind tunnels so our undergrads could readily learn aerodynamics. While one of my peers sized the tunnel, I built a fully parametric CAD model of the wind tunnel that could be immediately modified as the sizing was figured out. While building the CAD model, I made sure to add or remove features to ensure the vast majority of the parts for the tunnels would be easily FDM printable. 

Once the design was frozen, I spent many weeks wrangling the shop's collection of temperamental Ender 3's to print all the parts needed while also working with my peers on machining and assembling the non-3D printed parts.

Although our first propulsion system using duct fans didn't work, I led our pivot to using off-the-shelf drone motors, ESCs, and already in place lab DC power supplies for a successful completion and delivery of the mini wind tunnels before the start of the lab period. 

You can read a write-up by the department on these mini wind tunnels here.

Besides building miniature wind tunnels, we were also tasked with developing some of the experiments that would be tested in the wind tunnels. One of the most quintessential wind tunnel tools is the smoke wand for flow visualization. In larger wind tunnels, any typical Halloween smoke machine is used. A smoke machine of that size would overwhelm our mini tunnels and the lab holding them. After one of the fluids professors recommended using a vape as a smaller smoke source, I scoured the web for the least offensive yet smokiest vape the department could somehow be convinced to buy. Once acquired, I CADed and printed a case to hold the vape and extraction fan needed to blow the vape smoke out of the vape while also trying to make the vape look as not vape-like as possible. It's surprisingly effective as you can see in this gif.