I am overjoyed to say that I got my first choice for the UBC capstone. I was one of two mechanical engineering students working with 3 mechatronics students. Though I took the role of Project Manager, I was really interested in being involved in the coding and machining. Luckily, my team was happy to oblige. I had the opportunity to do about half of the required coding, in addition to the project management, machined all milled components as well as stock estimation and ordering for all custom components. 

This project took a great deal of work and I was lucky to work with such a talented team of individuals. From having the opportunity to custom-tune motors, to being able to conduct complex structural analysis, detailed CAD design and complete a full course-load simultaneously is not a slight achievement. Our team was able to do this while surpassing client expectations.

We knew from the start of our project that many components would be custom. Time was left at the end of the project that we could take our time machining these components. This time shrank as we ran into obstacles, and a capstone timeline cannot be expanded nor can the budget.

When you have the opportunity to provide yourself room to fail, it is always the  right choice to do so. Engineering and design requires iteration. As we knew the budget for this project could not be expanded, we opted to 3D print every custom component and complete a fit-test at the earliest availability. Like any good temporary solution, some of these components ended up being final components (such as the cable track).

This was a project I completed for J&J Fine Line in Port Alberni. They wanted to be able to show their client exactly what they would be making and provide the city with drawings for approval. As this was not to be an engineering drawing, they requested I keep it simple. A highlight of this project was being able to instance each components so that the bill of materials output all lengths and materials required for the job. It was also a good opportunity to  show what I know of BC's building code and learn more as I worked.

Unfortunately, while I worked at Nexii, we were asked not to record media. I can't show any of the projects I worked on there. I still highly  recommend checking out some of their work. 

While I was at Nexii, me and my team were responsible for all of the internal geometry of their building panels. We operated CNC hotwire cutters and routers to cut all of the initial panel geometry into the foam cores which then became the basis of each successive step. This means that if we did not cut channels for the rainscreen, drainage, or routing electrical and plumbing before the core was encased in Nexite (an alternative to concrete), the panel would need significant remediation.

This is the positive for a jello mold I made. More than likely, I could have bought something thatwould have worked. As a student, I felt this would be a good opportunity to learn something new. We were asked to provide something for a manufacturing class that could be used to create a vacuum-form mold. Naturally, a friend and I spent a day working out how to use an XBox kinect as a 3D scanner to scan his stormtrooper helmet. This created a point cloud that I then imported into Solidworks.

Solidworks, it seems, does not love point clouds. Unsurprisingly, the scanner left many holes in the model that were a challenge to fix. If it hadn't been for one professor who told me it would be impossible to make the model work, I may have quit. I was eventually able  to solve these issues by converting to a mesh and then to a  solid. I then generated CAM and machined it on one of the school's Tormach CNC mills. It was a simple project but finnicky to get to work as well as it did. I was able to get the machining time down to about 25 minutes.