Rose Kitz

Brass Soprano Trombone

I designed, built, tested, wrote a piece for, and learned how to play this soprano trombone, all in one semester.

• Sourced & budgeted materials (for <$140), based on extensive brass manufacturing processes research
• Scheduled trainings and sought advice from metalworking, acoustics, brass-playing, and fabrication experts, rapidly transforming from a novice to deliver a functional & beautiful soprano trombone
• Designed & fabricated all custom tooling to maximize learning and minimize cost, absorbing all the tricks of the trade from machinists, professional woodworkers, and jewlery artists
• Iterated from a bell, to a slide bugle, and eventually the full trombone, to stay on track with “functional instrument” goal

Checkout my full design & process!

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Mechanical Can-to-Art Machine

Turn your cool brewery can into a pocketable art piece in just two cranks!

• From-scratch design & fabrication of modular 3-in-1 clamping, blanking, and embossing mechanism to punch out brewery-logo design from aluminum can sheet, integrated with 100% mechanically powered, high-force arbor press
• Focused on blanking & embossing mechanism with sub-team partner Julia Divan, consulting with professors in machine, product, and fabrication design
• Designed, prototyped, and tested system over a semester working with three fellow senior mechanical engineers and real-world client Sydney Ladner

Checkout my team's full report!

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Electronic Musical Instrument

The Sledgehammer Kablammer

Autonomous Robot Dog

Camera Vision with OpenMV and Nicla Vision

Raspberry Pi Driving Robot

Navigates a Maze Blind with Buttons!

Working with two groupmates in my Electromechanical Systems & Robotics class, I designed both the physical and electrical components of this driving robot in two stages. In the first stage (picture to come), I designed the chassis of the car in Onshape (and eventually laser cut it) to strategically position the various components of the robot (wheels, motors, Raspberry Pi, wire management) for ideal weight distribution to allow the robot to drive smoothly through a narrow hallway. I also worked with my partners to utilize Flask to establish a consistent wireless connection between the brain of the robot (Raspberry Pi) and our HTML webpage that had basic movement buttons to signal the robot to move or turn in a certain direction.

For the second stage of the project, we incorporated four buttons onto our robot so it could 'sense' hitting walls in a hidden maze, redesigned the chassis, added PWM motor control to enhance turning and calibrate the wheels, and modified the buttons on our HTML site for easier real-time remote control of the robot. To start, I worked with my teammates to test our minimum viable prototype of a button press sending feedback from the Raspberry Pi back to our webpage, which we eventually achieved by setting up the Pi as a server with Flask and sending data in response to HTTP requests. Then, from my teammates' preliminary Onshape sketches of a new chassis, I designed the living hinge walls to support multiple platforms and enable a circular robot for smooth turning in place. I iterated through many versions of living hinges, spending hours by the laser cutter, to eventually find a pattern that balanced flexibility with strength for the talls walls I designed to span the entire height of the structure. I also took and adjusted various measurments to improve the snug fit of laser cut pieces together along with the components within the structure. In between turns on the laser cutter, I worked on implementing and testing the PWM motor control (transitioning from simple off/full speed in stage 1) on a singular DC motor. Then, once we assembled the final robot structure, I tested the accuracy of the PWM driving, modifying the program on the Pi to calibrate the wheels to enable different speeds of straightforward/backward driving and gradual turning.

From this project, I learned how to better manage a team project to delegate tasks to work on as both a group and as individuals. Additionally, I improved my physical fabrication skills (experimenting with living hinges, finding 'quick & dirty' ways of building certain parts like a bolt as a caster wheel, designing a physical structure to balance and secure electronic components), particularly in the context of a multidisciplinary project focused more on electromechanical components than simply a physical build. I gained deeper experience connecting robots to the internet, progressing from SPIKE Prime my first year of college to a Raspberry Pi now, and finding clear ways of both controlling the robot and representing real-time feedback on an HTML webpage. In general, I thoroughly enjoyed the process of combining my Python programming skills, interest in physical fabrication, and developing further experience with electronics to work with groupmates on a complex system with a 'simple' purpose.

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Electromechanical Game

Merry-Go-Golf

Inspired by a childhood of smacking purple golf balls into mini barns, windmills, and, most often, bushes, I designed & built an electromechanical game that packs the thrill of mini golf into a desktop-size arcade game. I programmed an Adafruit Feather to control the game and take inputs from the dashboard potentiometers and buttons, then changes the behavior of the DC (under platform) and stepper (attached to golf 'club') motors. I designed both the electronic & mechanical components of the project, and laser cut, soldered, and assembled everything together.

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PCBs

H-Bridge

I designed this h-bridge PCB on KiCad to control the direction of a motor, including a 12V barrel power jack and a screw terminal to provide flexibility for the power source. I also incorporated two indicator LEDs for motor power. Additionally, I added detailed labels to several components and arranged each footprint neatly to optimize the soldering process. After finishing the KiCad design, I ordered my PCB to be fabricated, then soldered it and incorporated it into my class projects!

Power Supply

This power supply was the first PCB I ever designed! Through this project I learned the steps to go from a circuit sketch all the way to a physical PCB in my hands to incorporate into my future electronics projects. I thoroughly enjoyed soldering components to my own PCB. The pictures demonstrate my progression from sketch --> breadboard prototype --> KiCad schematic --> KiCad rendering --> manufactured & self-soldered PCB. The PCB receives power from a 12V wall-adapter barrel jacks and converts the power to 3.3V and 5V, with pins to supply this power to the rails of a breadboard.

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The Xylophone Player

The Xylophone Player consists of parts of a LEGO Education SPIKE Prime kit, a modified xylophone, and OnShape-designed laser cut acrylic pieces (for the marble holding and dropping mechanism). With the challenge to create a middle-schooled targeted "Playful Creation" playable over Zoom, I designed and built this apparatus around the xylophone to "play" the instrument by dropping marbles on the keys. The children could access my web interface and either click a button to play a pre-loaded song, or create their own song by inputting letters. Visit my web interface here: http://tiny.cc/music-play.

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Silly Walks

This Silly Walks project was a challenge to make a robot out of the LEGO Education SPIKE Prime kit only that could move forward, without wheels, and with only one motor. My robot features a rotating rubber band and gear chain system which connects the one motor with both legs of the robot. I also added rubber pieces from the kit to improve the friction between the otherwise slipperly plastic robot and the ground.

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