About Me

Welcome, and thanks for stopping by! I’m a recent graduate of MIT with a BS in Engineering (Course 2-A: Mechanical Engineering with Computer Science concentration). Keep scrolling to find out about some of my past personal projects!

Independent Projects

Custom 3D Printed Watch

Designed my own custom watch in SolidWorks. Printed it on a MonoPrice Mini printer. Retro fit the housing with an existing watch strap. The watch movement is intentionally exposed so that the viewer can appreciate the inner mechanism.

Custom 3D Printed Watch Version 2

Decided to make the watch entirely 3D printed. This entailed designing a 3D printed watch strap, a difficult obstacle I avoided in Version 1. The issue came in making a flexible watch strap from rigid 3D printed plastic. Using SolidWorks, I engineered a unique hybrid link-pin design, which combines the link and pin into one part. This design is similar to a standard removable link and pin strap found on most metal watches except combined into one.

I made this design decision in order to eliminate the manual assembly of the strap after printing. This hybrid link-pin design allows individual links to be virtually mated in a SolidWorks assembly.

From there, the 3D printer prints the links out as one completed and interlocked watch strap. With the hybrid link-pin design, I can effortless assemble an entire strap with just a couple mouse clicks and then let the printer do the work. This is a unique perspective on manufacturing - designing parts that assemble as they are printed/made - and is something I’m currently investigating.

Here is what the strap looks like as its printing. You can see the printer making individual links that are interconnected.

Here is the completed strap. As you can see it is very flexible! I calibrated the clearance between the pin and the through hole such that each link can freely rotate.

Here is the completed watch!

DC Brushless Motor

Designed and built a brushless DC motor. Used SolidWorks to CAD an assembly which I then fabricated. Laser cut the acrylic parts and made my own electromagnets by winding copper wire around a ferrite core. The motor has two main components: a shaft with four permanent magnets and the six electromagnets. The six electromagnets are wired to and controlled by a Raspberry Pi. Using Python, I programmed the electromagnets to sequentially attract and repel the permanent magnets located in the shaft. This causes the motor to spin.

Below is a diagram of how the motor works. The concentric circles represent the electromagnets while the red cross represents the permanent magnets on the shaft. The pink text represents the electromagnet changing polarity. Each permanent magnet is both attracted and repelled by the neighboring electromagnets which cause the shaft to rotate.

Smart Mirror

Designed and built a Smart Mirror. A Smart Mirror is a concealed screen which displays behind a one-way mirror. The design makes the image float in space without borders. This is similar in concept to the TV screens mounted behind mirrors in fancy hotel bathrooms. My Smart Mirror comprises of a Raspberry Pi enabled computer monitor mounted behind a one-way mirror. I CAD designed the assembly on Onshape, a cloud-based CAD software.

I fabricated the wooden housing and created the one-way mirror using glass and a film. I discretely mounted the monitor within the wooden frame using custom 3D printed fixtures.

Remote Control Wheelchair

Transformed a regular wheelchair into a remote controlled one. Created it in order to test the viability of an autonomous, person-following, wheelchair concept, which could be used for medical applications. I installed motors on the chair using custom mounts that I machined using a mill and lathe. I then attached sprockets and added a chain drive to power the wheels. To enable remote control capabilities, I installed a TI cRIO. Here is the remote controlled wheelchair in operation.

Used a lathe to fabricate custom bearings for the wheelchair.

Used a mini mill to machine slots in custom motor mounts.

Sand Sifter

Designed and built a bike-powered sand sifter. My friend and I constructed the device out of my garage using an array of hand held power tools. We sourced recycled material – an old bike, a wooden pallet, and scrap wood – to build with. The sand sifter consists of a bike-powered rotating mesh barrel mounted on a platform. The user shovels in sand into the machine, and as the barrel rotates, clean sand falls through the mesh while trash goes out the other end. The bike-sifter assembly easily disassembles and is portable.

Group Projects

Automatic Plant Watering Device

Designed an automatic plant watering system for an embedded systems class final group project. The device automatically waters your plants when the soil is outside of the temperature and humidity bounds. There is a integrated capactitive moisture sensor, water pump and led screen built into the compact prototype housing that I designed.

If you’re still interested in finding out more, feel free to shoot me an email! bmorioka@mit.edu