custom snowboard stomp pad

Stomp pad fitted to the board.

This was a quick project requested by my brother for a snowboard stomp pad. He provided me with a vector outline of the word "fidelis" to make into a stomp pad.

A few things considered in the design were: enhancing grip, attaching it to the board, and maintaining its strength. The original request was to make a simple outline of the word. My thought was that this would be too fragile to stand up to being kicked--for example, in instances when it's used to knock the snow off your boot. This design would also be difficult to attach as there would not be enough surface area for adhesive. Additionally, the small pieces like the dot on the "i" and the "d" and "e" would require a template for alignment. My solution was to make it one piece by putting an offset border that would encompass the dots in the "i," then pocketing out the word.

The word was etched repeatedly to a depth of about 1/16" and then cut out with a laser. I used some leftover 1/4" rubber from a previous project. It was attached using double-sided mounting tape.

The stomp pad worked perfectly with zero slips throughout a day of snowboarding and my brother was very happy with the design.

redbull flugtag sf 2012

Entertaining the crowd in the "hangar" area .

This November I participated in Red Bull Flugtag with a team called the Slammin Tri Lambs. We were trying to build a plane that would fly as opposed to one for comic relief. The design was supposed to resemble a double-necked guitar with wings and picks for a tail.

Quick CAD work for the event application.

The plane was a short wing, long cord, canard aircraft designed to use ground effects to gain extra lift. For this project I did most of the initial design work, with input from the team, and all of the CAD work.

Version 1.

Version 2.

The plane was designed around easily available and cheap materials from the local hardware store. The spars and fuselage were made from a plywood and foam sandwich for strength. These were surprisingly strong and could easily hold up a person when cantilevered out. The wings on each side could be pulled off for transportation. All the complex shapes were cut with a water-jet.

Water-jetted foam pieces.

Water-jetted plywood pieces.

Nearing completion. Elevator moved to the back.

After some model testing, the team decided to move the elevator to the rear for ease of calculating the center of gravity (CG) of the plane. If we had more time, I believe we could have made the canard work. However, the plane was built in only about two weeks.

Painted and ready for some final touches.

McCovey Cove with the 30 ft launch platform.

End result.

Unfortunately, the plane did not fly. After the event, we suspected two mistakes that may have caused the plane to nosedive off the platform. First, we had the plane sitting on the cart too far forward, which nosed us down as the cart went off the platform. Ideally, we should have had the CG of the plane closer to the back of the cart, allowing the plane to separate from the cart more easily. The second mistake was using paracord for the the elevator controls. After watching video from the event, we noticed that the elevator moved about a third of what it should have been capable of, meaning that the paracord was probably stretching.

A video of the live stream can be seen here. We come on at the 1:36:00 mark.

"Z" for zoom

Original design concept.

This is a project I did for some friends who are about to have a baby. They wanted to decorate the baby's room with the alphabet, where each letter was made by a different friend. I chose the letter "Z" because I thought it was cool to choose the end of the alphabet. The letters were supposed to represent the maker, so I went with a car theme using some engineering to get the wheels to do a burnout.

Car assembly.

 The car was made from six layers of plywood. Each was laser cut and glued together.

Car Interior.

The two center layers were just in the roof area so that car would straddle over the bottom of the "Z". I put in a sub frame piece to support the body of the car.

The "Z" was made from four layers of plywood, also laser cut and marked. The bottom of the "Z" from the "OOM" was one layer thick and the slot allowed the space for the sub frame and axles to slide through. In the back, there were also cutouts to allow it to hang onto nails.

Painted and in the starting position.

 The car was painted with spray paint while the wheels were painted with Plasti-Dip to give it a rubbery feel.

ZOOM.

The axles are a 1/4" hardwood dowel riding on nylon bushings that were pressed in the car. PET spacers sit between the car and the "Z" to take up space and to allow the car to slide smoothly. When the care slides across, the axles ride against the bottom of the slot causing the wheel to spin--giving the appearance of a four wheel burnout.

Here is a quick video of it in action.

home still: complete assembly, cooler, and temperature control

I haven't posted anything about the still in a while, but the work has been steady. In fact, the construction is complete.

Completed Assembly.

With some preliminary testing with water, I realized that there was a slight flaw with the condenser design. It condenses the vapors well, but since the condensed drops just fall off the coil, the liquid is still very hot. I decided to add a cooler in order to bring the temperature down.

The cooler is the smaller tubes in the foreground.

The cooler is a simple tube and shell cooler. The cooling water is plumbed from the outlet of the condenser so that I can operate both with a single pump. With this configuration I'm able to get the condensate to almost room temperature.

Another component completed is the temperature control for the pot heater.

Temperature control unit.

The control unit is the same as some DIY Sous Vide controllers that utilize a PID heater controller and solid state relay. The control unit powers a water heater element which is connected to the pot with a sanitary fitting.

Heater element with detachable cord.

I did notice some inconsistencies in the temperature readings as compared to other thermometers, but this heater unit can hold consistent temps. I believe this may be due to a slow reaction time of the RTD probe.

Other experiments have also shown that it will be better to use the dephlegmator to control vapor temperature, so I may use the temperature controller to power the dephlegmator pump instead.

The experiments will just continue from here...

carbon stand up paddle board

Cut away view.

This is just a quick design of a stand up paddle board (SUP). It's designed to be completely made from carbon fiber.

Internal skeletal structure.

The internal skeletal structure is made from interlocked sheets cut boards.

Bottom surface added to skeletal structure.

There are two exterior surfaces that are pre-molded before assembly. Everything is glued together with structural adhesive.

Completed SUP.

The top surface is colored white to keep the board cool.

Side profile.

Bottom view.

Given the construction and materials, this should be fairly light and buoyant.

folded keychain bottle opener: packaging

Ready to be mailed.

I sold my first folded keychain bottle opener (aka business card bottle opener)! But I ran into the problem of shipping. My original plan was to put it in a regular envelope. But I felt that without some support, the opener might tear the envelope and get lost in the mail. So I devised a simple package from a piece of cardboard.

Easy to remove.

To insert or remove the bottle opener, you simply bend the cardboard on the line and slide the opener in or out. The cardboard is slightly thicker than the opener so it is pressed down where the opener slides in. This also allows the opener to sit flush with the rest of the cardboard. When the opener is in the envelope, it stays flat and locked in the center.

The first piece I sent out was cut with a razor, but future ones will use a laser-cut piece. Ideally, the packaging could also be the mailer, but this worked and was very inexpensive to ship.

home still: condenser

I finally completed the condenser portion of the still. From the last update I brazed the coil into the main tube and added the collection portion of the condenser.

Collector before brazing.

This update took a little while because I was contemplating my approach for the collection portion. I eventually decided to approach it as simply as possible with a flat plate and a short tube up the center. These pieces were brazed to the stainless sanitary fitting and the fitting was then brazed to the outer tube. The center tube could be extended in the future by slipping another tube over. I will experiment with this to see which works better.

The condenser works by having the vapor come up the center through the small tube and condensing onto the cooling coil. It then drips downward and into the collection area formed by the plate and the two tubes. The liquid drains out through a tube on the bottom of the collector.

Completed condenser.

All the copper tube sections are completed. The next things to work on before testing the parts are the heating controls for the pot, and cooling system for the condenser and dephlegmator.