Providing a space for students to create
At the BIDC, I work in hot works, which is the lab that handles methods of fabrication that involve large amounts of heat and electricity. We have two kind of parts of the lab, welding/fabrication and jewelry/casting. For the former, we mainly do TIG welding, which allows us to securely and precisely fabricate products involving not only steel but also aluminum. We also do use MIG and stick occasionally. Jewelry is my favorite section of the lab, because it’s really great to take a break from engineering to do something involving hands on creativity.
In my time as a peer mentor for the hot works lab, I have guided students to gain the understanding and skills necessary to carry out personal or team projects, ranging from FSAE cars and underwater robot chassis to art projects and jewelry. I have also personally learned many new things about making, and have had lots of personal projects in the past couple of years
Some of my own work
I do generally lean more towards art and jewelry. My favorite process in the lab is metal casting, where we use the lost wax casting method to produce highly detailed replicas of either wax/resin/plastic objects.
We have also attempted to make a copper inset for a PURPL engine using metal casting. It wasn’t completely successful and we ended up machining it instead, but I am hoping to have more engineering applications come out of this part of our lab. One thing I’d like to see, is if we improve our equipment, we may be able to sinter alumina and other ceramic powders/resins in the future to create highly heat resistant parts.
A replica of a ring from one of my favorite video games, Dark Souls III.
I modeled it myself using ZBrush and printed it on our Formlabs, then casted. This one was a prototype and I plan on making another in sterling silver.
A D&D figure, printed using the BIDC’s Formlabs resin printers and castable resin, then casted using pure copper, giving it an antique finish.
An example piece of using an oxy-acetalyne torch to flame paint copper.
A piece I made with a buddy during one of our most popular workshops, the scrap animal/sculpture workshop, where we teach students how to take junk and turn it into something fun using MIG welding.