Portfolio

I've built many things in my life. This portfolio represents a small sampling of my work.

See also my resume here.

3D Printed Snap Together Remote Control Car

I designed two versions of a 3D printable remote control car to check my assumptions about 3D printed robotics. It does seem, from what I have learned with Scout, that useful robots can be made on a home 3D printer. Additionally, it seems that a wide range of mechanisms can be produced on a home 3D printer without support material. Even with the additional constraint of screwless design, Scout was relatively easy to design. I am confident that a range of ground vehicles, stationary robotic assemblies, and boats could be made on a home 3D printer, opening up the possibility for rich open source robotics projects supported by a wide community. Find more information about Scout on its GitHub page. See also the article on Scout I wrote for Make Magazine.

Flutter Wireless

I've designed all the PCBs for my company, Flutter Wireless. The main boards, the Pro and the Basic, feature a 64MHz ARM processor, lithium battery charger chip, cryptographic keystore, and 868/915MHz wireless radio with 1km range.

Over the past few years I've made more than a dozen PCB designs for Flutter. My goal with the company is to learn how to operate a profitable business, so I can get more of my designs on the market. All of Flutter's products are open source. Find more information at FlutterWireless.com

Brushless Motor Driver

As a hobby project and part of my goal to continue research in open source hardware for robotics, I have designed a 1kW Brushless Motor Driver.
Source files are on github.

Brushless Linear Motors

I designed and built several generations of brushless linear motors for my first attempt at a robotics business. This involved implementing work found in a research paper as a proof of concept, designing my own motors in simulation, and then building four generations of my own design. I also designed several generations of drive and control electronics, devised a novel non-contact position sensor, wrote the control software in C++, fabricated all mechanical parts myself including an aluminum housing with thin walls and complex 3D curves, wound the coils by hand, and assembled all PCBs.

Rugged Touch Screen Tablet and Load Monitoring Software

In 2010 I designed a touchscreen tablet from scratch, combining a 400MHz SOC running Windows CE, a 7" 800x480 TFT Display, and a 7" capacitive touch panel with a custom machined housing and custom C# GUI application to create a complete load monitoring system for a customer's specialized application. I did all system bring up, including hand wiring of a 40 pin ribbon cable to prototype the display connection. I wrote all software for the system including the application loader and main GUI app with SQLite database, and machined the custom housing.

2000 Ft-Lb Underwater Torque Sensor

This torque sensor for the oil and gas industry is waterproof up to 4000m of depth, and features a pressure sealed display that can withstand 10,000 psi for over 24 hours.

I designed and machined all of the aluminum and steel components. This includes lathework on the 7" diameter bucket before and after welding to the machined top plate. The features on the side of the bucket were machined on a vertical mill using a 4th axis. The aluminum display also features a machined stainless steel support for strength.

Other 3D Printed Robots

I've been exploring the concept of print-at-home robotics for several years. Some of the robots I have designed are shown below.
Before Scout V2, there was Scout V1
Scout V1's right angle gears didn't last long. Scout V2 uses all straight spur gears which seem to never wear out! Scout V1 was the first fully functional snap together robot I built, but it still needed some tape to keep the top on.
My initial work in using o-rings as pulleys (below) was not a success. O-rings stretch over time and will not stay tight. I'd like to make a good turtle bot some day.

Other Machining Work

My daily job for 7 years was to design custom torque measurement equipment and program our CNC machines to make it. Over the course of that time I designed hundreds of parts. Following is a small selection of some of the work I did there. Unless otherwise mentioned, I designed and machined all of the milled and lathed parts in the following photos. I also took all photos.

Offshore Torque Measurement System

Torque Wrenches

Fancy Box

3000 Fl-Lb Rotary Torque Sensor with angle output for Boeing

Bench Mount Torque Measurement Systems

"Rundown Fixture" and Custom Bolts

High Torque Test Stands