Robotics Projects
Robotics-related mechanical projects or subsystems
01 - COMPLETED
Phobos - 4131's 2023 FRC Robot
Jan. 2023 - As the Head of Design for my high school's FRC team, I had the responsibility of doing the design and CAD work for the majority of the season's competition robot while transitioning the rest of the team to using Onshape. Ultimately, this robot (with me also as the primary driver), Made our team the 3rd-best performing robot in the district and got us a division finalist at the world championship in Houston, TX. The team had not gone to worlds since 2016, so this was a big step-up in our performance. The robot was also simple enough to build that we wound up manufacturing a second, named Deimos
02 - COMPLETED
Helios - A Fully Custom CNC Router
Nov. 2022 - This is a CNC router which I designed entirely from scratch in my own time and then built and wired. Though I made it with a router, it's designed modularly to support laser modules, foam cutters, pen plotters, or potentially even 3D printer extruders. The goal was to be a versatile, high accuracy and high volume system for a variety of uses at fairly low costs (~$600-$700). The design is not perfect, and there's a variety of changes both big and small I'd like to make were I to iterate on a second design, but I've been able to produce some high-accuracy parts using this machine.
03 - COMPLETED
FRC Turret Project
Jun. 2022 - This was a summer project I began as a way to grow my skills in CAD for FRC robotics in preparation for taking on the Head of Design role on my FRC team. While a mechanism as complex as this was a high bar for myself as my first real CAD work for competitive robotics, and took many attempts, it certainly paid off through the season.
04 - COMPLETED
Viking - An FRC Mini-bot
May 2023 - After I saw another FRC team design a robot to play the 2023 Charged Up game with as small of a frame perimeter as they could (18" x 18"), I thought it'd be fun to try and approach the same challenge myself. In only a week, I was able to CAD a competition-legal robot with swerve drive which could compete in all aspects of the 2023 game in a footprint that was only 12" x 12" (25.17% of our competition season robot, Phobos)
05 - IN PROGRESS
Custom Hexapod Robot
Jul. 2023 - This is a fairly new project which I've only just started the design work for. The goal is to build a six-legged robot using 18 MG996R servo motors (3 DOF per leg) that runs on Arduino and has a full range of motion. This project will also require a lot of math for the inverse kinematics of the legs, which will help refresh and strengthen my programming skills, especially in the Arduino lanugage.
06 - IN PROGRESS
Air Cannon
Jul. 2019 - Now on my fourth iteration, air cannons have been a long-running interest of mine. While not a robot, it's a heavily mechanical (and electrical) project that I don't have a spot for. It operates using a piston valve, which allows for extremely high power output even at low pressures and without using combustible fuels. I'm working on an Instructables article that will cover how I designed and built the latest design with detailed instruction so others can replicate it.
07 - IN PROGRESS
Custom 3D Printer Extruder
Feb. 2021 - In the interest of getting familiar with Solidworks, and as a way to improve my manufacturing abilities, I designed a custom 3D printer extruder for my Anet A8 3D printer. Made to house a custom full-metal hotend, it should be able to print exotic materials that are abrasive or require high temperatures, like polycarbonate, nylon, or carbon fiber. I've had to put off machining some of the components until I can access the proper equipement again.
08 - IN PROGRESS
Swerve Drive
Apr. 2022 - Widely regarded as the best drivetrain in competitive robotics competitions like FIRST, swerve drive at a scale suitable for FTC robots is a project I've attempted to design a few times. Though I've gone through 3-4 iterations, without support from my school's FTC team I never had the chance to make functional prototypes.
09 - COMPLETED
3D Printed Geneva Counter
Dec. 2021 -As my most difficult and one of the last projects I made on TinkerCad before switching to parametric software like Onshape and Solidworks, I made a mechanical counter mechanism that, aside from a two skewers as a shaft and a bit of decorative tape, is entirely 3D printed. It utilized a set of Geneva Mechanisms, which allow for a "snappier" rotation of the number dials.