I participated in the 2015 IIT HERE Maps hackathon with a team of 3 other students. Teams were given 24 hours to make use of an API provided by HERE maps to create new and potentially innovative location based software.
After the build period had stopped and the presentations were made, our team was awarded second place!
Goliath is a 150 lbs robot built by Illinois Tech Robotics for the annual Jerry Sanders Design Competition. It won the Demolition round in 2015 and 2016. I was the VP of Engineering and ensured our robots met deadlines and design requirements. I also got the oppertunity to design a ball caster suspension for Goliath.
In the past two years, I have been volunteering as a mentor for the Byron High School robotics team. One major project I worked on was the construction of a DIY CNC machine. We started with the X-Carve kit from Inventables and quickly ran into limitations.
Initially, the machine was controlled by an Arduino running GRBL. The stock stepper drivers were underpowered and I wasn't happy with the machine's performance. After quite a bit of research, I settled on upgrading to a LinuxCNC controller, gecko stepper drivers, and a closed loop spindle speed controller. This would let us use proper CAD-CAM and have a whole lot more flexibility. (At the time I didn't know how to write a post-processor, and am still a little fuzzy today) Getting linuxCNC setup wasn't trivial but I was able to learn a ton.
After the all the upgrades done things still didn't go as smoothly as I would have liked. The X-Carves' physical design is limiting factor. The frame could be a lot more rigid, and I am not a fan of the belts being used for linear drive. That said the machine works fine, it just can't take more agressive cuts.
I don't have a formal education in machining but was able to learn a lot in college, on the job, and from the internet. One day at work I was asked to take a crack at reprogramming a part for our mill/turn machine. It was a little nerve-wracking as I single stepped through my new program. I was still a relatively new employee at the time and this was my first time testing code on the actual (very expensive) machine. Fortunately, my program ran with no issues and went into production.
MACH 2 is a centrifugal catapult that took first place in distance and second place in accuracy at the 2014 IIT Pumpkin Launch. Its longest shot isn't on official record, but comes in at 331 feet.
Photos courtesy of Kori Bowns
Video courtesy of Nash Kaminski
My roommate and I salvaged an old mobility scooter and attached a 6.5 HP IC engine to it. It gets up to about 25 MPH and is not in anyway stable.
It made it on Google Maps!
In the summer of 2014 I attended a summer camp designed for incoming college freshmen. This camp had all sorts of engineering projects and challenges for students, one of which was designing the strongest and most efficient balsa wood bridge. I went overboard on this project, by taking the time to model it in Autodesk Inventor, and using a native FEA solver to look for stress concentrations. The bridge took first place and held just over 200 pounds.
In the fall of 2015 I worked on both the Mach 2 pumpkin launcher and a brand new one. The new launcher was modeled after an ancient roman catapult called an onager. It used thick twisted bundles of rope as a torsion spring to propel the throwing arm forward. In this case the torque generated exceeded 1000 ft-lbs. This also generates an enormous lateral crushing force. To compensate and disperse these forces ¾ inch aluminum plate and black steel pipe were used.