Portfolio of Work

University of Cambridge

Fourth Year Final Project- Recreating Leonardo Da Vinci's File Cutting Machine (2018)

Based on a sketch drawn by Leonardo da Vinci in the 15th Century, I designed, built, and analysed a file-cutting machine which automatically produced metal-working files. It is thought that this was the first time da Vinci's machine has ever been built. I made a number of improvements to da Vinci's design, such as altering the mechanism so that the movement of the file blank is paused during each hammer strike, designing a new mechanism to control the motion of the hammer to improve reliability and robustness, and adding the ability to adjust the depth and pitch of the teeth cut...

Conceptual Design Project - A Household Waste Compactor (2016)

When challenged to improve the efficiency of household waste collection I chose to tackle the problem of excess air in bins. From experimentation with my own bin, I noticed that "full" bins were actually full of air and could be relatively easily compacted reducing the volume by 50%. I designed a wheelie bin with a screw-based mechanism to compact waste which would allow bins to be collected less often thereby improving efficiency. The design was praised for its practicality and buildability and was awarded a prize sponsored by Costain for being one of the best projects.

Integrated Design Project- A Robotic Vehicle (2017)

This project involved working in a team to design and build a robot to complete a specified task. The robot had to pick up a small cast component, rotate it to the correct orientation, detect the presence of flashing on the casting and check the temperature did not breach a threshold value before either inserting the component into an ‘engine block’ or delivering it to a reject bin. It had to do this five times in five minutes...