2024 - Present
Just for fun - Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures
Over the past few months I have started playing in two D&D 5e campaigns. In addition to being a member of the campaign, I print fun miniatures and toys for us to use during the sessions. Here are some that I have made so far.
Simon designed using Hero Forge
Simon Battle Mech designed using Hero Forge
Simon 3D Printed
Simon Battle Mech 3D Printed
Dice Towers
I found a design for a boiler themed dice tower. We use this one in our steampunk campaign. It has 36 parts that I needed to glue together over multiple sittings (so they could dry). I am also experimenting with painting here. I tried to create a fantasy weathered copper tone for the boiler body with old lead pipes and a dirty floor.
Home 3D print timelapse
Parts ready to assemble
Dice tower rolls dice!
Fully Painted
This dice tower is more fantasy castle themed and I use it in my traditional fantasy campaign. I attempted to paint a dark wet/musty stone with wooden flooring on the interior and clay flooring outside the gate where the dice land. There are also two skeletons I painted to add some energy to the model.
Home 3D print timelapse
Dice tower rolls dice!
Fully Painted
Sometimes the
dice just don't roll like they should.
Dice Jail
Rendering of NU PUDLE
2018-2019
Northeastern University Prospecting Underground Distilling Liquid Extractor (NU PUDLE)​
Finalist
Best Technical Paper
Six member team selected as one of ten university teams to compete in the NASA RASC-AL Moon to Mars Ice Challenge, June 3-7, 2019.
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NU PUDLE is a robotic jackhammer system designed to solve the problem of in-situ water collection on from subsurface ice deposits Mars using the Rodwell water extraction method a multiple-effect distillation system.
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Team: NU SEDS Mars Ice Team
Role: Design Lead for System integration, JET tip, and Cable driving Subsystem
Jackhammer Extraction Tool (JET)
Problem: How to collect water from an Ice deposit that is located half a meter under rock, and is multiple meters thick?
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Solution: JET is a jackhammer tool with a detachable heated tip and a cable driving system. The jackhammer penetrates through the Martian overburden to access ice, then employs the Rodwell water extraction method by melting an area of ice and heating the resulting pool of water until it grows into a large subsurface reservoir. As the reservoir becomes larger, the detachable heated tip is lowered into the water by the cable driving system. All water is pumped out of the reservoir when a sufficiently large region has been melted.
System Level Jackhammer Extraction Tool
Unique Design Feature: JET Tip
Problem: How do we create a tool to melt ice and sink deep into an ice deposit to extract all the water?
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Action: I designed a detachable tip for the JET that contained a 200W cartridge heater, and a water inlet port. The tip would detach from the jackhammer and sink into the ice as it melted. The tip took four design iterations and was driven by results from physical testing and from SolidWorks finite element analysis.
The initial concept was predominantly aesthetic for our proposal. It contained all the necessary elements, and was designed to mimic the consumer moil point chisel tool, but was not designed for manufacturability and assembly in mind.
Initial Concept for the JET Tip
Solidworks Thermal FEA on first two JET tip prototypes
Solidworks thermal FEA on final JET tip
All three manufactured JET Tips
The first iteration was designed for manufacturability. Once it was tested, it became clear that the tip of the tool received such poor heat transfer, that even if the rest of the body was hot, the tip would never descend into the ice. Our proposed fix to this was to machine off excess material on the tip and create external geometry resembling a chisel rather than a spear. Side by side thermal analysis is shown above.
Iteration two was a quick modification of the initial prototype to validate this theory. We made the change in SolidWorks, analyzed heat transfer conditions for both tips with the power from a 200W cartridge heater, and fully submerged each in freezing water. As shown in these images, the new version had a much more uniform distribution of heat, allowing the tip to heat enough to melt the ice holding it in place.
The third and final iteration of the design was to allow for two 150W cartridge heaters, as well as changing the external geometry of the part from a taper with a chisel tip to a cylinder with a chisel tip. In this final iteration, the external surface behaved in the most uniform manner. It also was capable of outputting 50% more power than all the prior versions.
Result: This final design was the one we implemented and sent to Langley Virginia to show off at the challenge.
Final Design of the JET Tip
Unique Design Feature: Cable Clamp
Problem: How to secure the JET tip to the jackhammer while jackhammering, and release the tip into the ice while melting?
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Action: To solve this problem, I developed a cable driving system that would spool cable at the top of the jackhammer, then lock that cable in place for the duration of the jackhammering process. Once the jackhammering was complete, the cable would be released, then unspooled to drive the JET tip into the ice.
An additional constraint that added complexity to this problem was that we could not afford to pay for electromechanical actuators that were rated to withstand vibrations and shock from a jackhammer. The entire clamping and spooling mechanism needed to be actuated from off of the jackhammer. To do this, the spool was driven by a stepper motor that was mounted rigidly to the PUDLE frame. When the jackhammer was off, it could raise and lower the JET tip via cables routed through the top of the JET. When the jackhammer was operating, this spool would not keep the tip locked in place. Instead, a pin with a through-hole was firmly clamping the cable in place. This pin was actuated via a linear actuator mounted to the PUDLE frame. The linear clamping actuation was transferred by a bike gear shifting cable to the pin.
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Result: This clamping design operated effectively for multiple days of jackhammer testing, as well as through the full 12 hour Mars Ice Challenge competition.
Cable Clamp Actuator Assembly
Cable Clamp Pin Assembly
Running our 2017-2018 NU PAWES at RASC-AL Mars Ice Challenge System at the NASA's Langley Research Center. Our team was awarded first place for collecting the most water.
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2017-2018
Northeastern University Planetary Articulating Water Extraction System
(NU PAWES)
Most Water Extracted
2018 NASA RASC-AL Mars Ice Challenge
Awarded first place and $5,500 for most water collected at NASA's 2018 RASC-AL Mars Ice Challenge held in the Langley Research Center to go towards further research and participation in the 2019 IEEE Aerospace Conference.
NU PAWES is a prototype system designed to solve the problem of water collection on Mars. It is a remote-controlled subsurface ice extraction system capable of drilling through up to half a meter of overburden and extracting 300 mL of water per hour from depths of up to 1 meter.
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Team: SEDS Mars Ice Team
Role: Design Lead
Mars Ice Challenge Day 2
by Allie Nicodemo, NEU, June 8, 2018
NASA’s Mars Ice Challenge Heats Up
by Eric Butterman, ASME.org, August 2018
Time-lapse footage of the RASC-AL Mars Ice Challenge competition Day 2
2016
VEX Robotics Nothing But Net Competition
Illinois Tournament Champion
Illinois State Excellence Award
World Math Division Build Award.​​
Awards:
Video produced in 2016 for a VEX world award submission
One novel element of the robot I owned is the design and construction of the pneumatic gear shift shown.
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This space-efficient gear shift was designed with basic VEX parts and pneumatic pistons. It transfers power from the drive train to an alliance robot lift.
Gear Shift:
My team's robot completing an autonomous skills challenge and scoring within the top 30 teams in the world.
2015
VEX Robotics Skyrise Competition
Awards:
Illinois StateTournament Champion
Illinois State Excellence Award
World Math Division Build Award.
Holonomic Drive Train
A wheel configuration that allows pivoting about the robot's geometric center.
Center Brake:
Clamps robot to floor at the center of mass for an accurate pivot.
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TEAM 355B: Steel Pythons
Fox Valley Robotics
Slow motion footage of our robot manipulating three cones autonomously. Note the first cone is pneumatically disengaged.