The line between passion and obsession is often a blurry one. Few times have I observed this to be more true than with my personal projects. I’ve become an engineer with skills that I’ve been told equate to an engineer of tenure, yet the proficiency I gained was in no part to any job, but instead to a stubborn drive to accomplish a mission. This mission has changed many times, from making designs that were never anything more than paint upon canvas to those for which I can create documents with accurate Bills of Materials, manufacturing methods, and assembly directions. From ornaments on a desk to hold a simple phone upright for the convenience of a typist, to 3D printed RC armored pest control tanks and products meant for a wider market. I never once asked myself “if” something can be done. I only ask “how”.
Active Projects
Project Hephaestus
July 2024 – Ongoing
Conceived as a sister project to Project Gigaprinter after an interview in Silicon Valley California wherein I Was exposed to how carbon fiber is made. In addition, it is a direct response to the prohibitive cost of autoclaves. My solution was to retrofit a Stainless Steel Uline 55 gallon drum. The finished product would have a diameter of 2.5 feet and a height of 33 inches. Using welding techniques, exterior stainless steel stiffeners will reinforce the cylindrical body of the drum to withstand the internal vacuum, further supported by a stainless steel outer shell which also serves as a retention cavity for expanding insulating foam to improve the efficiency of the internal heating element. While equivalents can cost nearly $100,000, this design would cost less than $3,000, with this value inclusive of the cost of relevant electronics, motors, valves and gauges.
L’Amante 59 Engine
August 2024 – Ongoing
The L’Amante 59 is a highly significant component of the L’Amante project due to the fact that is the destined power plant for both Project Hornet and Project L’Amante. The L’Amante 59 in particular is the parent version of the engine meant for the Hornet, while the eventual L’Amante One will be for the full sized vehicle, and is meant to simply be a scaled up version of the 59, from the scale reduction factor of 59%.
This engine is a 1.25L flat plane 40 valve V10 with a Piston Stroke of roughly 25mm. This low displacement and stroke allows for minimized forces to be applied to reciprocating components, and thus placing an emphasis on horsepower over torque. To aide in this performance, a dry sump oil system, solenoid valve trains, preignition chambers, and a tesla turbine oil pump will all be employed to increase engine efficiency.
This project has been grandfathered in to DLE and is currently suspended until resources become available to more effectively perform R&D on an engine in a scalable configuration of a classification and with specifications that are not public knowledge as there is an ambition to use it to contribute to a business plan to turn an arm of DLE into an engine designer, manufacturer, and supplier similar to Cosworth and AMG.
Project L’Amante
April 2024 – Ongoing
Conceived as a sister project to Project Hornet, Project L’Amante can easily viewed as a foreseen legacy of the RC car by reorienting, and eventually succeeding Hornet by designing the modules for Hornet in a way that they would require minimal modification to function in a real car. This includes both cosmetic and functional elements and will consist of the following.
An entirely unique car design inspired by classic European cars such as the 1967 Alfa Romeo Stridale 33, 1961 Jaguar E-Type, and 1970 Fiat 124 Spider, with some additional design philosophy notes taken from the Mazda Miata. The objective of this project is to create a drivers’ car whose emphasis is not on performance numbers, but instead on drivers experience, dynamics, and physical beauty. This project will consist of 2 chassis models, both with two trim levels: a front-mid engine configuration and a rear-mid engine configuration, both with the option of a 4, 6, and high-revving 10 Cylinder engine. The halo car of this series will be the rear-mid engine configuration with the 10 cylinder engine. While early versions implied all versions of Project L’Amante would be made from either a tube or monocoque made from aluminum, an exposure to aerospace-grade carbon fiber manufacture in Silicon Valley, California has prompted the use of a carbon fiber monocoque. In addition, a technique employed by Pagani to pigment the resin that impregnates the carbon fiber body panels in the place of paint will be used to color the body panels.
The chassis superficially takes heavy influence from the aforementioned Alfa Romeo Stridale 33 and Jaguar E-Type for the front and rear engine configurations respectively, and the profiles of a 2019 Fiat Spider were used for a proof of concept sketch and model. The L’Amante 59 V10 engine is directly inspired from Formula 1 engines from the early 2000’s with an emphasis on horsepower over torque
A car body has been completed with body panels given sheet-metal characteristics, as well as some sub-assemblies such as the headlights, taillights, and suspension have been either completed or carried over from Hornet.
Completed Projects
Project Hornet
August 2023 – May 2024
An entirely bespoke electric 1:4 scale race car with an integrated mock V10 engine inspired by Formula 1, a compact suspension system with adjustable alignment, camber and caster, FPV compatibility, and stabilizing aerodynamics. In addition, this RC car utilizes a unique integrated duct pathing method in combination with a dynamic surround sound system to generate as visceral of a driving experience as possible in a remote setting. Project was suspended with a conceptual scale model of the car body 3D Printed and magnetic suspension functional proofs of concept.
Project Giga-Printer
Aug 2023 – June 2024
This project evolved from a need in the early stages of my university senior project to cheaply manufacture extremely large, complex shapes. An Ultra-Large Scalable format FDM 3D Printer whose build size ranges between 1 square meter and 10 square meters. In addition, the overall open source design is optimized as to reduce cost and permit a decentralized procurement process as to eliminate most if not all overhead costs while still employing the industry standard components for higher performance FDM 3D Printers . This product has the potential to allow for companies to cheaply and quickly produce an accurate prototype of components as to rapidly address and improve upon unforeseeable quality control, fitment, alignment, and ergonomics issues as well as a cheaply creatable mold for concrete structures, and custom components manufacturable advanced materials such as fiberglass and composites such as carbon fiber.
Project Coastways
Oct 2022 – May 2023
Designed for my university senior project class, I led an engineering design team consisting of 3 CSULB mechanical engineering students and 1 international exchange student from France to conceive and manufacture a water-cooled gaming chair that uses a centralized cooling unit with silicone tube cooling elements that can be more broadly applied to other furniture with nonpermeable fabrics. While this was an idea that was conceived under frequently changing operational requirements, as set by our professor, I was able to isolate variables of possible or expected ambiguity and lead my team to operate optimally within the parameters of our established mission objectives. This led to an environment where we did not fully understand the extent of what we were expected to design, but optimally spend our time on existing objectives, and with what information we were able to deduce from both our interactions with our professor and our previous objectives, anticipate future objectives. Therefore, I was able to strategically orient my teams’ workflow and establish an efficient pipeline for time management as to accommodate new objectives as they were presented.
MSLA Negative Pressure Chamber
Oct 2022 – Nov 2022
This project was commenced in response to the prevailing issue around resin 3D printers, namely their fumes that possess both a highly potent smell and potentially carcinogenic micro particles(although this is not certain and varies by resin type/brand/etc). My solution is a FDM 3D printed mount from PLA that uses custom gaskets made from a rubber-like TPU filament to ensure a seal. This allows a PC cooling fan to suck air out of the printing enclosure and out through a 4inch standard HVAC vent that can be mounted to the exhaust end of the attachment, and in turn dump the fumes in a safer location void of any traffic.
Project Titan Series
May 2020 – Sept 2022
The Titan project is, in reality, a series of two projects linked together by a consistent vision evolved through the failures of the first iteration.
The initial concept of this project was driven by an existing fascination I’d developed for a playable vehicle in the arcade tank combat video game, World of Tanks. This was originally conceived as a simple exercise in complex integrated part and assembly design, wherein a single module can serve multiple functions and enable multiple subsystems. However, this mission evolved into a more applied scenario when my family dog was sprayed twice by a skunk in the same month. Henceforth, Project Titan’s mission objective evolved to that of an RC combat vehicle.
The first iteration, T57E20 Titan 1 was designed to fit atop a LEGO Technic tracked chassis that I’d built when I was 12, but when there were packaging issues housing the airsoft fire-control module, turret rotation motor, electronics, and gun elevation motor, the final form of this project was initiated in late 2020, the T57E20A Titan 1A.
Project Leviathan
Feb 2018 – Feb 2023
I started a product design project as an independent inventor to pursue the concept of a portable source of substancial yet portable hydroelectric power. Multiple iterations were pursued until a final design was settled upon and subsequently refined, modified for DFM and DFA, and parts were refined to lower the cost of manufacturing, startup, and to reduce points of failure. This resulted in a compact, rugged, self-contained Hydroelectric Turbine Generator. The turbines utilize a turbulence induction patterned system (TIPS) to increase efficiency and take advantage of modern MSLA 3D Printing technology.
While this project never reached the market, it served as a valuable learning experience into the entire product lifecycle from conception, market research and mission statement definition, to design verification and release, drawing creation, manufacturer and supplier liaising, and investor presentation preparation. I would later discover that this was a crash course into the role of a project manager.
MFA-22 Mini Raptor and XM116 Jet Engine
~2017 – Jun 2020
I’ve never been one to start on easy mode, and this project is the perfect example of that. This project began with a simple desire to design a turbofan jet engine, which was a class of technology that’d fascinated me since high school, during which time I’d designed an iron man suit and accompanying jet engine to impress a girl I’d met in my time in sports. Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful, but this experience regardless resulted in an understanding of how jet engines worked on a fundamental level after analyzing endless hours of maintainance being performed on various commercial aircraft engines. The jet engine in this particular project was more of a capstone to prove to myself that not only did I understand how it worked, but also how to properly design one with a 3D printer. As a result, I concieved and designed a turbojet engine with a single bypass, two stage compressor configuration. However, 3D printing at the time was new field to me and effectively science fiction in my perception at the time, and I had no concept of how expensive it would be to manufacture the parts I needed out of metal, and how poorly the more functional plastic materials would fare under the operating conditions in which jet engines normally function. Nonetheless, this project was my first true experience flexing my intellectual muscles in part design, assembly design, and some early exposure to DFM and DFA.
The larger, more flashy component of this project came as a sort of “Cherry-on-Top” for this entire project. The obvious inspiration of the MFA-22 Mini Raptor is the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, and I chose to take on this project with the explicit purpose of pushing myself into CATIA V5’s Generative Shape Design (GSD) toolset, which was mentioned by the professor whose class I’d taken for the program, but never elaborated on the subject. It was appropriate, then, that I began this particular arm of the project by pulling images of the aircraft off the internet, to then begin reverse engineering, and subsequently begin tracing over on my student laptop on a plane bound from LAX to Langley Airport for a family trip to Washington D.C.. While I’d seen videos of people doing speed-sketches of cars and other random objects on youtube to prepare myself for the project, the learning curve was still enormous. Yet with time, practice, and effort, I would eventually complete the airframe and submit the project for the Official Dassault Systems 2019 Student Project of the Year design competition along with another project I’d taken on at the time. I still hold this project close to my heart as a fruitful learning experience that gained me a skill that I’ve yet to personally meet anyone that’d similarly acquired regardless of seniority and tenure, and in time, would learn to confidently master it. As a final act, however, I added a personal touch and designed a cockpit to integrate my skills in GSD and traditional part design, before exposing myself to the native Photo Studio and Animation toolsets. While admittedly less than perfect, it did allow me to explore other lesser known strengths and utilities for which CATIA can be used.
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