I spent the summer preceding my junior year working with an MIT initiative called Project Manus with the goal of creating a new, educational makerspace for the MIT community. This involved visiting existing spaces to see what made them effective, speaking with industry leaders about tool selection and shop upkeep, physically purchasing machines, and setting up the 3000 square foot space. I then developed safety protocol and training guides for all the machines in the lab and in the process became quite adept at a multitude of fabrication processes.
Personal contribution: physically constructing a makerspace from the ground up, creating safety and educational material for all machines in the shop, training the MIT community to safely and effectively use the shop.
Tools/skills learned: CNC mill/lathe, MIG/TIG welding, waterjet, laser cutting, 3D printing (SLA and FDM), moldmaking, plastic thermoforming, glassblowing, sewing, hand tools, others.
My fellow researchers and I spent the first week of the summer designing and building “Battlebots”- style robots to compete in a head to head battle. Pictured is my robot, which came in second. It uses a drone motor to spin an aluminum bar with holes cut out of it to decrease its rotational moment of inertia.
Machining Experience
Working with Project Manus has left me confident in my ability to use any number of machine shop tools. This list includes mills and lathes, MIG and TIG welding, Ironworker, CNC routers, waterjet, laser cutting, SLA and FDM 3D printing, power tools, and hand tools.
One of my favorite things about machining is completing entire projects in the course of a few hours. I ordered a large shipment of Shopbot router bits and needed a way to organize them. I decided it would be oddly poetic to use the shopbot itself to create a router holder, and two hours later I had this, a custom bit and collet holder.
Teaching Experience
A large aspect of my time at Project Manus dealt with creating lessons for the MIT community that teach particular machining techniques. From brainstorming lesson length and layout to identifying key features to learn to testing my lessons with actual students, I gained a newfound appreciation for creating quality educational material. I also further developed my skills as an engaging yet informative, hands-on teacher.