Driveway A/C Overhaul in Montana
Rebuilt my sister's car A/C in a rental driveway 700 miles from my garage — compressor, expansion valve, and condenser, recharged to spec by weight.
Portfolio
Projects
Research instrumentation, thermal systems, electronics, and things built in a garage. Each one lists what I did and what actually came out of it.
Walking AT-ST
A scale bipedal walker taken from LEGO mechanism study to Fusion 360 assembly to 3D-printed servo hardware — including a hand-derived inverse kinematics solution for the legs.
Bioaerosol Sampler Control System
Custom KiCad PCB, watertight enclosure, and a tuned PID loop holding a 225 L/min virtual impactor at target flow in real time.
Passive Thermosiphon Solar Still
A solar water still built from under $60 of hardware-store parts, driving its own circulation by convection alone — no pump, no moving parts.
Child-Proof Cabinet Latch
A spring-loaded latch that locks automatically when the door shuts and needs a deliberate pull to release — three printed parts, one spring, 18 g of PLA, under $1.
Two-Colour Pyrometer for Fire Radiative Power
A sub-$1000 handheld instrument to measure the radiative power of small fires — and the ray-tracing simulation that found a broken assumption underneath the optical design.
Portable Drive-In Movie Screen
A 7-foot freestanding PVC frame holding an 80-inch screen, modelled in Fusion 360 and built to pack into a car — a drive-in movie you can set up anywhere.
Escape the North Pole
A three-room Christmas escape room in MATLAB and Arduino, with a custom 3D-printed D-pad controller — I built the sleigh game, the CAD, and the electronics.
Honda CR-V Upper Engine Rebuild
Rebuilt the cylinder head on a 2001 CR-V after a timing belt failure bent the valves — full teardown, repair, and reassembly over one winter.
Full-Size Hobbit Door
An 8-foot functional round door, modelled in CAD and built over three months — scope I chose to take on well past what the assignment asked for.