Precision Manufacturing/ Fabrication
For the past two years I have received my TA funding through working at the Tufts Mechanical Engineering Bray Laboratory. As head of Assisted Fabrication it is my job to help students and research faculty design and fabricate tools, parts, and test fixtures for various classes, clubs, and research projects. During Covid-19 our lab transitioned from a shared teaching space to a dedicated job shop responsible for fabricating all parts for the year, including multiple senior design projects. Here are some of the things that I have helped design and build over the past two years.
Aluminum Banana and motor shaft adapter for replacing a cooling fan inside our Instron testing machine. The banana is one of my favorite parts to show students learning CNC because it demonstrates how flip cutting on a 3-Axis machine can be used to create smooth organic shapes.
For this job I had to CNC 36 identical polycarbonate bioreactor lids and 12 identical bases for a research project. I ended up making a custom set of soft jaws to help with locating the stock to save time on each operation. The most difficult part of this job was the fact that all parts needed to remain transparent after machining, meaning all speeds and feeds needed to be tuned perfectly.
30mm f1.4 Prime Lens I designed and turned on a lathe. Pictured here on a prototype camera body I made for my independent research project.
I designed this lens to fit on the Fujifilm X-Trans bayonet mount of my X-E2s
This is a custom microscope stage I fabricated for a professor in the department. In order to make both the pocket cut and the sharp internal corner geometry, this part had to be first waterjet and then relocated inside the CNC machine. Because it is used in a microscope, all dimensions needed to be accurate within 0.001”.
Device I helped design and fabricate for two students in order to automate micro pipetting of blood samples on to microscope slides.
Collapsible animal trolley I made for the Tufts Veterinary School
Precision scissor lift I designed for a research lab. This device is meant to be placed under the base of an existing SCARA arm mounted to a rover to increase range of motion. Client required a self contained mechanism with an extension of 12”, collapsed height of < 6”, 12v power, and have minimal deflection under a 50lb load. To minimize torque required from the linear actuator at the beginning of the stroke (when the device is fully compressed) I created a cam mechanism that increases the mechanical advantage at the beginning of the stroke.
