Personal Portfolio

This page highlights various personal and school projects that demonstrate my skill and interests. Similar to many engineers, I enjoy creating new things and solving problems in my own life. This has led to me creating solutions to common problems that I like sharing, but are not considered professional accomplishments. Ranging from simple 3D printed parts, to ongoing maintenance projects, many of these items can showcase my ability in design or problem solving.

My current ongoing project is my 2009 Jeep Wrangler I bought a few years ago. I have been modifying it to be a capable overlanding vehicle with some rock crawling abilities. I have personally installed various aftermarket parts and accessories whether on the side of the road or in a garage. I have personally done the following tasks on my jeep:

Degenerative Disc Disease (DDD) is a common ailment in humans, but rare in the animal world. Alpacas are one of the few animals that experience DDD. To create tools to better study and diagnose DDD in humans, a PhD student at Brigham Young University wanted to study individual alpaca discs at a molecular level using spectroscopy in conjunction with MRI scans. I helped in this project by removing the soft tissue around the spinal bones and cutting the spinal unites lengthwise and through the vertebrae.

I am an avid longboarder and wanted to try my hand as creating my own carbon fiber longboard. The projects consisted of using a CNC router to create the mold out of MDF, then the laying of biaxial carbon fiber sheets and resin. The mold was then compressed and left to cure. After removing the board from the mold, the shape was cut using a Dremel and cutting discs.

I have had the pleasure of having multiple friends involved in art. Being an engineer, I was approached multiple times to help create or finish art pieces. My favorite opportunity was creating a rotating jig for canvases. Using 3D printed parts, exercise weights, longboard bearings, and PVC pipes the jig could hold canvases up to 6 feet square, while allowing for the center of rotation to occur at any point in the canvas. The jig was spun by hand while point was poured slowly. While being a messy process, the resulting paintings were fun and unique.

I created 3D printed vinyl holders for an old rental house. The bi-stable compliant mechanism allows for the records to be securely fixed to the wall, but then actuated to remove the items. Since the hangers are bi-stable they can remain in the open position until the vinyl's are returned to their storage location. This allowed for easy one handed operation. The hangers were printed in ABS on my personal 3D printer.

While living in rented housing, hanging heavy or delicate objects is difficult. Wanting to display my Lego Saturn V, I found that I was able to use a blank electrical plate to hold it without creating any holes in the wall. A 3D printed plate attached the electrical box to two threaded rods. The threaded rods held a small shelf which supported the weight of the model. The threaded rods also held two arms that constrained the model from tipping. The arms allowed for the model to be removed when desired, but couldbe secured with a zip tie when on display.

Since I love adventures, I have wanted a vehicle that I could easily sleep in. With the purchase of my Jeep, I had the perfect opportunity to create a stowable bed platform. When stowed the platform acts as a shelf/tonneau cover. The middle seats can then be folded down and 2 leaves placed to create a bed platform large enough for 2. The upper leaves can be placed individually, allowing a single bed to remain set up on solo trips (The jeep is too short for the driver's seat to remain in position while the bed is in place).

Wanting to create something new over a winter break, a friend, my brother, and I decided to make an unreasonably complicated gingerbread building. The 3 feet high space needle was a half day long project. While we did cheat using hot glue, the gingerbread pieces and decorative icing were made from scratch. Our gingerbread space needle ended up on Seattle TV news, even though it was built in New Mexico!

The pneumatic Pipsqueak engine is the traditional first introduction to manufacturing at BYU. Requiring us to use mills and lathes, we were required to build the engine using drawing we created ourselves. The sophmore level course was a fun introduction to metalworking.

Not wanting to let a simple assignment go to waste, a project partner and I wanted to fulfil our freshman year general ed art history project in a way that gave us a new skill. Using papercraft, we created a replica of a helmet worn by the "Halo" video game character "Master Chief". The project consisted of generating the design, cutting out paper panels, folding and gluing the papers, then coating the assembly in resin. The helmet was then painted, with various painting techniques to simulate wear and tear.