A self-balancing two-wheeled robot that drives itself through a 10 m maze in 13.62 seconds, with all estimation, control, and navigation running on a single Arduino Nano. The chassis is statically unstable, so it stays upright only by continuously sensing its tilt and correcting through its wheels hundreds of times per second.
A model rocket engineered for maximum lateral range, flown to a best measured 74 ft 5 in off a compressed-air launcher. Two fin designs were carried from OpenRocket simulation through to flight testing, and the launcher itself was instrumented with a strain gauge so that range predictions rested on measured thrust rather than nameplate pressure.
A fully functional portable Bluetooth speaker, taken from raw hardwood to a finished product. Its drivers, amplifier, and battery were packaged inside a hand-built mitered enclosure modeled in Fusion before any material was cut, then wired by hand and fitted with a hand-stitched leather handle.
A playable solid-body electric guitar, designed in SolidWorks and built from a single glued hardwood slab to a finished instrument. The body outline, cavities, and neck pocket were fixed in the model so the bridge, pickup, and neck registered correctly, then cut to that layout, dyed, wired, and set up to play.
Certifying a California community college course against the CVC POCR rubric costs a peer reviewer 5 to 10 hours of manual clicking. SONIQ ingests a Canvas IMSCC export and returns a draft report across all 25 rubric standards in 5 to 10 seconds, every finding naming its source page with evidence and a suggested fix, with the certified reviewer keeping the final call.
A complete electric drivetrain designed and integrated onto a mountain-bike frame from the ground up: a 750 W, 52 V mid-drive, a frame-mounted battery, and a high-current power path with brake-cutoff controls. The full system was modeled in SolidWorks and built out to a finished mass of 20.2 kg.
A three-jointed robotic finger that curls like a human one, driven by a single servo rather than a motor at each knuckle. A routed tendon produces the motion, so the joint geometry does the work extra actuators normally would. The whole mechanism was modeled in SolidWorks and documented as a reproducible drawing set.
An autonomous Mindstorms EV3 robot built to run a FLL mission field, with a rigid cube chassis for fast attachment swaps and a shiftable gearbox that traded speed for torque to suit each mission. Reflected-light line-following replaced dead-reckoning for more accurate travel, earning 2nd in Robot Design and 3rd in Robot Performance at the regional Championship.
A working FDM printer, built from its component parts and validated end to end by modeling, slicing, and printing a part across its 220 × 220 × 250 mm build volume. Building the machine by hand was the means of learning how its electronics and motion system actually work.
Fabrication Index
Hands-on shop and independent projects (machining, welding, woodworking, and electronics), documented more briefly.
A complete internal combustion engine rebuilt from the ground up, torn down to its rotating assembly and reassembled to factory torque specifications. The pistons, crankshaft journals, and cylinder bores were measured with a micrometer, a bore gauge, and feeler gauges, so every running clearance across the combustion and rotating assembly was verified before it went back together. Each fastener was then torqued to its factory value in the prescribed sequence.
A standing robot figure fabricated entirely from flat sheet metal. The stock was measured, cut on a Beverly shear, and bent to form, then MIG welded into one assembly, built up in sequence from the eyes to the legs to the torso. A metal plate drilled to the chest serves as a small access door.
From a CAD deck profile to a finished, rideable board: a contrasting-hardwood laminate was glued, planed flat, and shaped to a deck outline modeled in SolidWorks. The cured blank was traced and band-sawn to shape, its kicks formed with a router, and the truck-mount holes drilled on a drill press for left-right symmetry, then the deck was sanded, polished, and fitted with trucks and wheels.
A playable multi-lane real-time rhythm game built on a single Arduino. LEDs across the lanes light up one at a time, and pressing the button mapped to the lit LED sounds its note on a piezo buzzer, so a run of correct hits plays a chosen song note by note. Button sensing and tone generation run together on a single microcontroller.