engineer-inthemaking

[engineer-inthemaking]

~ Ironman Helmet Update ~ Let the painting begin! The ear caps have been added along with the detail over the whole helmet. Each coat of silver is being followed by a light sand using steel wool to give a subtle brushed metal texture. Only a few more coats to go before a splash of red and gold!

[engineer-inthemaking]

Maiden flight was a complete success! Even after a few hard landings and a flip or two the quad seems to have held up nicely. No props broken, no shorted wires and no loss of fingers...you can’t ask for much more from a first flight. During the final take off I decided to strap on my action cam and see what sort of footage I could get and I was not disappointed. With a little stabilization and a shock mount I think we may be able to make a racing quad out of this little beast!

[engineer-inthemaking]

I’ve been waiting to get bitten by the quad-copter bug and it has finally happened! Late last week I started researching and within a few days all parts were sourced from HobbyKing and arrived in exceptional time at a very reasonable price. In under a day the quad has been assembled and is ready to fly (with some tweaking I’m sure). Hopefully the sun comes out tomorrow for the maiden flight!

[engineer-inthemaking]

So I had a spare hour and decided to build my own simple yet very effective tactile transducer. This converted old speaker greatly enhances any music listening or movie watching experience by allowing low inaudible frequencies to be ‘felt’ as they do in real life. This can be used to feel realistic explosions from movies or generate the feeling of festival/concert style bass without shaking off your neighbors roof tiles.

The device is bolted to the bottom of my desk chair and generates very little audible noise meaning that when used with headphones or any other speakers no one knows you have taken a trip to Tomorrowland for the night. I was very surprised at how well this project worked out and I think it is going to be hard to listen to music without it now. With the proof of concept complete I’d like to make a second (or many a few) model/s to tweak the frequency response and further eliminate any audible noise. This will likely require some filtering circuits, sturdier hardware and case and a higher quality speaker. Overall a cheap, easy and fast project I would defiantly recommend to all audio/ movie enthusiasts or just for a bit of fun... I originally got the idea after taking a look at the ‘Subpack’ available from thesubpac.com. It looks like quite an amazing product that I’d love to get my hands on when I decide my little diy version isn't cutting it anymore.

[engineer-inthemaking]

-Ironman Helmet Update- After lots of sanding and another coat of primer the helmet is looking quite ‘all white’ if you ask me! Few more air pockets to putty up and another few rounds with the sanding block should bring it closer to the first coat of coat of paint!

[engineer-inthemaking]

Finished arduino controlled 4x4x4 LED Cube!!

[engineer-inthemaking]

Neat little arduino controlled 4x4x4 LED Cube I put together a few years back. Looking at making an RGB LED version once I finish up a few other projects.

Video of the final product to be uploaded shortly!

Inspiration and base code for this project come from showstopper1v100 - www.youtube.com/channel/UCPxuTYVU8qAuXIM­kfTu3fXw

[engineer-inthemaking]

Found some old photos I took at Sydney’s 2015 Vivid Festival. Such an amazing atmosphere being surrounded in a city filled with lights and interactive architecture from a wide range of designers, artists and makers. I’m looking forward to attending again this year and gaining some inspiration for my own projects.

[engineer-inthemaking]

This is one of my favorite projects of all time - the suitcase speaker. This portable speaker system has accompanied me on many fun adventures since its creation in mid 2013. Equipped with RGB led lighting and radio/usb/mp3 input it makes for a truly amazing picnic with friends. I plan to make a version 2.0 when time becomes available which will incorporate better quality speakers, lighter case and greater connection options.

[engineer-inthemaking]

Also started on an model of Iron Man’s Arc Reactor a while ago and have finaly got some time to get back into it. It is still a work in progress, but once the CAD design is all done it will be straight to the laser cutter!

[engineer-inthemaking]

This project has been underway for quite some time now and has been an exciting adventure of exploring new construction methods and materials. Within a few more months and a lot more sanding hopefully I will be the proud owner of my very own hand made Iron Man helmet. Then to start work on the rest of the suit....maybe...

[engineer-inthemaking]

This is one of my favourite and most rewarding projects to date. What started with an old second hand Logitech system turned into an awesome led lit speaker box which looked like it came straight out of Tron. The time and effort put into the design work including countless hand drawn and cad files definitely paid off!

The main focus of this project was to create an aesthetically pleasing design and the audio quality was not heavily considered. I am looking into making a second system, however this time I will have the subwoofer and tweeters separate to achieve a better audio experience. I will also line the inside of the box with Perspex to enhance the sound quality and depth.

A massive thank-you to Mr Mark Tyler for his help with cutting the MDF and allowing me to use the CNC router. This project would have been made incredibly more difficult had I have had to cut everything by hand!

Please check out ‘Chiaroscuro by Nick Falzone’ at the following link as it was a major inspiration for my project and there is some amazing work on that page!!

http://www.bit-tech.net/modding/2008/12/16/chiaroscuro-by-nick-falzone/1

[engineer-inthemaking]

This is one of my earlier projects from when I was beginning to get into electronics. It is a simple circuit using 2 TIP31’s to make leds flash to two channels of audio.