Boosted Boards - Mechatronic Heater Mule
Please ask me for a portfolio of Boosted project pictures!
Wizard's Chessboard - Senior Design Project
See this page for my group's Senior Design Project, the Wizard's Chessboard.
We created a chessboard that uses automatically moving chess pieces to allow a single player to play against a computer with varying skill levels.
Walt Disney Imagineering
In the summer of 2018, I interned at Walt Disney Imagineering under the ride department as a mechanical engineering intern. See my resume for details since I can't show photos.
Pictured on the left: For fun, I made a mini cornhole set to leave for future interns :)
SpaceX's BFR Assembly Animation
Finelite
In the summer of 2017, I interned at Finelite as a product design intern. There, I helped design E3 — the next generation E2 model. This project involved:
•designing a new fixture profile
•modified all parts to account for changes in LED boards/board type
•analyzed power density, account for driver output
•ergonomics for production line handling
•prototyping – CNC sheet metal parts, 3D prints, aluminum extrusions, wiring
Two group members and I recreated SpaceX's Big Falcon Rocket. We modeled the parts via Solidworks and animated the assembly using Autodesk 3ds Max. My teammates completed the First Stage and Raptor Engines.
On the left, we have my Solidworks assembly of the Spaceship (what I made).
Here is a draft of the video (with some lighting complications): https://youtu.be/51J7EfG7sks
LED Light Fixture
I've recently been obsessed with constellations and LEDs, and I wanted to incorporate these items in a project. I used these ideas in fabricating a lamp for my room.
Below: Video of the entire process! Alternative to reading this page.
The blue and white LEDs inside of the lamp simulate day and night as they are rotating and the city silhouettes I chose are places that are important to me that I have either been to or would like to go.
My original sketches consisted of ideas for using Neopixels, accelerometers, buttons, tissue paper, black lights, projections, and shadows. I also sketched ideas for the lamp design and base. I didn’t want to use fingers to hold the edges together, but for the thickness of wood I wanted to use, not many things would have worked well.
At first, I really wanted to do a shadow projection onto the walls, so on the left I have a test piece where I cut out the skyline of the city and shined a flashlight on it.
As for city silhouettes, I found images of the skylines and used Illustrator and Photoshop to trace the images and get them to cut out around the outer edge. This part took me a while because looking for an appropriate skyline and then editing it to see if it achieved the effect I wanted was difficult. For my hometown in China, there weren't many pictures of the skyline, so I had to improvise and stitch buildings together and draw stuff in.
For the electronics, I have an LED base and components on the bottom of the lamp. For the LED base, I laser cut holes for the LEDs into the disk. On the back, I soldered resistors, wires, and banana clips together and fit the battery packs on top.
I used a potentiometer to control the speed of rotation of the servo that spins the LED base. I wasn’t originally planning on making the speed variable, so the placement of the potentiometer isn’t the most ergonomic. That can be easily fixed with a laser cut hole on the outside of the lamp.
The LEDs diffused too much light to see the shadow projection clearly, so I ended up etching the acrylic with an orbital sander to achieve the look on the right. When attempting to raster it with a laser cutter, the edges warped. After sanding it the acrylic, I laser cut the stars, glued everything together, and put the lights in!
I could definitely improve on ergonomics and add a hole or outer switch for turning the lamp off and on. For a project that I finished within a week, I'm pretty pleased with the results. :)
Demo Video!
Carousel
From 1/20 - 1/22, my teammates and I traveled to the University of Pennsylvania to participate in PennApps, their semi-annual hackathon. A hackathon is an event spanning a number of days in which people involved in software development collaborate on projects.
Our idea was to create a storage system that allows for quick retrieval of PCB parts. PCBs are printed circuit boards that typically contain many small, seemingly identical parts. We store these parts in hundreds of bags thrown in a cardboard box. It's a pain to sift through and find the particular part we want. In a period of 36 hours, we created a storage system that allows for quick retrieval of these bagged parts. See the full description here: https://devpost.com/software/carousel-zhj3x8
Here's a demo video:
How does it work? Using the web application on either a mobile phone or a computer, you scan the barcode of the bag when adding a part to Carousel. This barcode is used to identify the manufacturer, part number, and description. Carousel will then spin to an empty spot and light an LED where you should place the item using a binder clip. To retrieve a bag, you search for the part using a part number. Carousel spins to the spot, the LED lights up, and you remove the bag.
I worked on hardware for this project. I drew out sketches of what I wanted the base and component retrieval to look like. As a team, we discussed the idea of a carousel so that the device might look something like the side view drawing in the bottom left corner (left image). Together, we thought of having two separate disks to hold the binder clip and papers up. After initial brainstorming, I was left to the design, consulting teammates about final design ideas when needed.
I came to the conclusion that we couldn't have a pole in the middle because we wanted the LEDs to stay in place above the disk while the disk would spin to a specific location. We also didn't have anything to use as a pole. Many, many sketches later led to the final CAD design shown on the right, which I did in Solidworks.
Above: web application on a laptop
I test cut the two slots on the left for our original design of two disks to test for bag size and binder clip placement. I realized that we didn't need two disks to do the job, so I scratched that and kept a single disk.
On the right are sketches of my design for a motor mount that would be 3D printed.
On the left is a picture of the Dynamixel servo that we used.
On the right, screenshots of the motor mount are shown. The top picture is shown the way we 3D printed the motor mount (flat side down); I cut off the bottom so that it would be easier and stronger to 3D print. On the bottom, I designed the 8 screw holes surrounding the center to be countersunk and the center hole to be cut out so the mount can sit on the front face of the servo shown on the left.
The center of the spinning disk is cut out in the shape of a square so that it can sit and turn with the motor mount comfortably and without glue.
Above: some close up images of the carousel. We added holes to zip tie various wires everywhere.
Below: the finished product (and me happily assembling it.. it works!)
Table
My roommate and I needed a table for our room, but we didn't want to go through the hassle of buying and later selling. I decided to build one with two requirements: must be foldable or easy to store in some way and about 1.5 x 2 x 2 ft.
I went over many different foldable designs and patterns for the top. My original ideas consisted of constructing the table out of wood and using an acrylic top to look like glass. Acrylic is expensive and isn't the best for a table top, so I ultimately just went with a scored wooden top.
As for the foldable aspect, I did not want to make it too complicated or use hinges. So I ended up designing the legs to fit inside of the table when stacked on top of each other. This allows for easy storage.
I made a model in Solidworks and quickly prototyped a small version to check for size and if the legs would slide in (where the white arrow is) without much difficulty. (Left)
Quick sketches for the patterned top are shown. (Right)
I designed the drawing in the left picture on paper so I could later score the table top (with a laser cutter). I edited it in Photoshop, Illustrator, and redrew some lines using a Wacom tablet. On the left is my test cut.
Some sketches are shown. (Right)
On the left is a picture of the assembled table top and legs. I used 1/2 inch plywood for each piece and doubled the thickness on the legs to be one inch. I CNCed the legs using a ShopBot and cut out the pieces for the top with a table saw. I then scored the top with the final design on a laser cutter. To glue the top together, I used biscuits (shown on the right) to make the connected edges stronger.
I decided I wanted the legs to be flush to the table top edges, but there was a lot of instability. I needed to add some kind of support structure or beams to keep it steadier.
I added beams reaching across the legs with threaded inserts so I could use screws to secure the legs to the beams. This way, the beams are removable and the table is still foldable.
Finally, I sanded it (with up to 400 grit) and applied a few coats of polyurethane and wax for a nice finish. It's done! :D
Bluetooth Controlled Vehicle
I worked on a team to create a bluetooth controlled vehicle to navigate an obstacle course.
In our first iteration, we 3D printed treads to use for the car. It didn't drive very smoothly (on the right side of the car in the picture, the tread slipped off of the wheel).
I painstakingly filed down the tread pieces and inserted sewing pins to connect them together. They broke pretty often and were hard to shape (I bent the end so the pin wouldn't fall off). Picture shown on the right.
I designed and 3D printed a remote and my partner set up the buttons to use for controls.
Proof of concept: we scratched the tread design and went with a rocker-bogie style vehicle. If one side of the car hit a bump, the corresponding legs would follow, but the opposite side would remain on the ground. This made it easier to navigate obstacle courses.
I designed the legs and chassis. The car needed to be lighter, so I laser cut a triangle design into the sides and cut out acrylic "legs." I also tried to redistribute the weight evenly by velcro-ing the battery packs to the sides, but the basket still rocked a lot and was much too heavy.
We then got rid of the clunky remote and incorporated a bluetooth feature so the vehicle would be controlled by an app.
We test drove it and the vehicle ended up flipping. The wires tangled because there was nothing stopping the legs from rotating 360 degrees around the pivot point. I then added support for the legs and housing for the wires.
Final version + video!
Drawing Machine
I created a solar-powered drawing machine made with acrylic gears rotating a sharpie.
In my first iteration, I laser cut wooden gears and tried to draw something by rotating the smaller gears by hand. One of the arms was longer than the other in an attempt to create a more interesting shape, but the gear ratio for both smaller gears to big gear was the same, so it didn't work out too well. This resulted in the pencil drawing in the picture.
In the second iteration, I changed the number of teeth on the smaller gears to play with the gear ratio. I also added a third smaller gear to turn the gear underneath the plate more easily. The arms extended and got stuck at their furthest points from the other arm on the gears, so this had to be fixed.
The wood gears ultimately added too much friction to the rotating motion of the arms. Acrylic gears worked much better, as shown on the left.
I wanted a way to control the speed of my drawing machine easily. On the right, there is an image of my Arduino and circuit that makes the drawing machine light powered. Light from a flashlight shines on a photoresistor in order to power the motor and the gears. Different amounts of light correspond to different drawing speeds (more light, faster speed).
I also had to design motor housing and a part to connect the motor to the dowel that turns the gears on top.
Final version + video!
TechGarage Summer Camp
In the summer of 2016, I worked at StemHQ's TechGarage Summer Robotics Camp as a student mentor and camp counselor. I developed a curriculum for teaching ~60 (middle to high school aged) advanced campers about Bebop Drone programming using Python and OpenCV. We used Pycharm, QR codes, feature matching, contours and colors, webcam filters, face detection, Pygame and joystick, and Bebop Parrot Drones in two final challenges. Many of the kids added additional features including taking pictures of recognized faces and overlaying images on the drone videofeed.
Here's a link to the google doc I made that's up on stemhq.org/resources, which includes video tutorials and instructions:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hKYjHraw6FaGWE99f3_aI7NBB03uO5AHLCRlx1VBpP0/pub
Light Guide Plate
For my design innovation class, our first assignment consisted of creating a name plate. The requirements were to show your name, the class name, and the term/year. My first iteration was very similar to the piece of rastered acrylic in the picture on the right. It was difficult to see the words on a wooden table, so in my second iteration, I stood it up and added an LED strip underneath it to make the text glow blue.
