One Day(ish) Builds

For the annual Cal Poly Machine Shop open house, we do a bottle opener keychain design. This year I designed the bottle opener to include a topographic map of local Poly Canyon, and variable chamfers along the outside edge. My friend Bradley did the machining this time using a 5 axis tombstone.

A topographic map of Lopez Island using a cnc router and stain to create water/land contrast

My bike desperately needed a plug for the open front rack tube. Luckily I had planned ahead and put a BSA threaded bottom bracket on the front. I single point threaded a plug to match and added knurling on the manual lathe, then engraved the top on the CNC mill. I then filled the engravings with black spray paint, scotchbriting off the front face afterwards.

After seeing a friend of mine make a copper rose, I decided to make an aluminum counterpart as a mothers day gift. Thin aluminum sheet was cut using tin snips, and the layers were spot welded together in the center. After bending the petals, I hot-glued the stem (aluminum filler rod) onto the back.

Over winter break I took the chance to test my old highschool's new Haas Minimill by making a sprocket with pressed in bearings. It now serves as my go-to fidget toy.

Happened to have some titanium lying around, so I made a couple of bicycle headset caps. The caps were first turned and counterbored on the lathe. I then engraved the first with a fly cutter and the rotary vise on the mill. The second I engraved on a cnc mill with a 1/6th endmill. I torched both caps to get some cool burnt titanium colors,

Second Cap:

For shop tech secret santa this year I got my friend Andrew, who recently had an obsession with spring switch fidgit toys. Naturally, I created a 10x scale model using laser cutting and 3D printing.

Carbon fiber clipboard made in my composites class. Wet layup with 2 layers of fiber and cured under vacuum.

A truly ingenious contraption...

An overly complicated way to launch Nerf Rival balls by pulling balls from 4 different magazines using a rotary feeder and cam system

I hoped to ultimately have this thing controlled by vision processing and track targets using a 2 axis turret system. However this sadly never happened due to something about a worldwide plague

My first attempt at a Nerf Rival ball launcher. It ended up ripping itself apart...