Portfolio

We completed a rapid turnaround project designing & producing a backlit Ultrasonic Levitation Model for The University of Glasgow’s FUSE CDT. 

This involved custom CAD design, electronics, coding and multi-colour 3D printing on our Bambu Labs P1S machine to enable branding colours.

The design was produced to be used either with a battery pack, or for mains voltage supply to enable flexibility when being used for outreach events.

We have completed numerous projects within the Diagnostics sector providing custom designs for Lateral Flow casings. These casings were designed as a configuration in Onshape, with a number of parameters which could be independantly varied per part. This allowed the client to generate a “critical path” through the table and produce a new best performing casing.

Parameters were adapted to ensure the correct clearance between the strip and casing, as well as sufficient clamping of the conjugate and absorbant pads to route sample fluids effectively.

This is another personal tinker project to showcase some simple PCB design, CAD, Design for Assembly, coding and modelmaking capability. 

The self-set brief was to replicate a Rubik’s Cube without the need for dextrous hand movements. 

The initial design intent involved the use of a flexible PCB to decrease the number of mechanical connections between each face. This was suitable as a concept, but was prohibitively expensive. GitHub was used to branch designs and enable traceability between PCB concepts. Subsequent designs utilised 6 individual fibre PCBs with similar geometry to reduce cost.

This project was completed as part of a 2 person team with a prop design studio.

The work included a full CAD design based on reference material sourcing materials, plasma cutting of parts, the electronics design, implementation and coding, and the design and production of assembly and metal bending jigs.

A custom removeable battery pack for use inside the prop using 3 x C batteries in series was also designed and produced.

With ARC gaining a grant to purchase a large bed CNC kit from Bulkman, this gave us an opportunity to design & build a custom aluminium table for the machine to be placed upon.

The design took under two hours using weldments in Onshape. The cross section chosen was an imperial size of 2″ x 1/16″ square section aluminium.

After the material arrived, ARC’s in house Jasic TIG welder was used after performing mitre cuts on pre-cut lengths.

Welding which requires the fusion of very thin metals, or exposed welds which can’t be post processed are generally not provided as a service by ARC. Welding of thicker materials from steel to aluminium for prototyping purposes is possible.

A sanding block was made to enable quick swapping of sanding sheets through the use of an over centre mechanism. This generates two stable points in the system, and ensures the clamping bar is always held open or closed, allowing for easy replacement of the sanding sheet, or firm clamping during use.

This mini project was a “One day build”, with the CAD taking ~5 hours, and the Form 4B+ printing all components in under an hour. The springs were designed as dynamic, mated components in the assembly for demonstration purposes. Remaining components were off the shelf.

From an industrial design perspective, subsequent prototypes would be designed to vastly reduce the number of components, optimise the design for assembly, and tweak the speed holes for effective injection molding.

This was an Industrial Design commission completed over the course of 1 day.

The client requested for a small batch of tough polymer shaft couplers to be designed and printed, to enable a fleet of machines to be useable for a few weeks until replacements arrived.

There’s been a variety of in-house upgrades and mini projects over the years that are worth a brief spotlight.

The equipment on-site is suitable for lighter R&D projects, as well as more industrial style prototypes involving welding & metalworking. Previous model making work involved the production of sgian dubhs, wedding knives, and some in-house racking & heat treatment equipment.