Kelli Shimazu
Mechanical Engineer
PROJECTS
Project|01
Project |01 Design Nature
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Design Nature is a first year class at Olin where students design and build bio-inspired toys. The first toy was a hopper toy made to jump 2' 4.75" in the air and perform 2-3 rotations. The second project was to create a puzzle game that uses the natural movement of the sloth. Skills used: Solidworks, Solidworks Motion Simulation, CNC mill, and basic machine/wood shop skills.
Project |02
Project |02 Wayv​
Kinetic sculpture project made in the class, Mechanical Prototyping. The sculpture is CADed in Solidworks and put through Motion Simulation to ensure that it works. Tools and Skills used: CNC router, laser cutter, lathe, mill, waterjet, CNC mill, and basic machine shop skills.
Project |03
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Project |03 Flower
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Kinetic sculpture done in Mechanical Prototyping class. This sculpture uses the inner gear of the planetary gear set to rotate the entire piece. The individual planetary gears hold the lily pads and made them spin. A cam is located on the sun gear and makes the flower open and close. Tools and skills used: Solidworks, CNC router, Waterjet, sheet metal bending, basic machine shop skills, RP printing, fiber glass casting, molding (with polyurethane), and 3D printing.
Project |04
Project |04 UOCD: FoodTrucks
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User Oriented Centered Design is a class specific to Olin College that teaches user motivated design and how to fully understand the client. For the main project, my team and I worked for the client of Food truck workers to create an interface where the workers can connect with their customers as well as those who need their help. Throughout this process we used various design techniques to get a better understanding of the client's motivations.
Project |05
Project |05 FEA of Biker Falling Headfirst
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This was an individual in-class project done in the span of 4 weeks. For this project I wanted to perform an explicit dynamics drop test with different material properties to see if I could get more accurate results to real life simulations of bike crashes. The materials I used were cortical bone, linear and crushable EPS foam, concrete, and ballistic gel. The gifs seen are some of the results from the different analyses. I validated my results by comparing it to the HIC and skull fracture probability criteria.
Project |06
Project |06 3D Scanner
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This was a project in the class, Principles of Engineering. Using two servos and an infrared sensor my partner, Judy, and I were able to scan objects. The mechanism pans and tilts the sensor. We used an arduino to write the pan/tilt code and uploaded the data into matlab to plot the object. Skills used: 3D printing, Matlab, and Arduino.
Project |07
Project |07 American Sign Language Gloves
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This was a project in the class, Principles of Engineering. In this class our team decided to create gloves that can translate American Sign Language to text on a phone. We decided to pursue this project because we were passionate about sustainability and connecting people of different cultures. Our main goal was to create a design that was compact, simple, and seamless. To create this glove we used the 3D printer, flex sensors, an arduino, an accelerometer, and bluetooth.
Project |08
Project |08 Architecture: Urban Regeneration and Planning
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This was a project I did while studying Architecture abroad in London. For the class Urban Regeneration and Planning, we had to create a site model insert of a current brown field near the Thames River in London. The goal of the site was to create regeneration by adding in different building for community usage. The design my team and I proposed was a mall connected with a nearby train station that leads to three residential/student housing buildings and a community area.
Project |09
Project |09 WHALE: Mechanical Design project
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This was a project I did in the mechanical design class. In a group of 5, we made a large 25' mechanical humpback whale that is able to move in a "swimming" like motion. This was the first iteration of the whale and only contains the bare bones of structure, transmission, and power elements.
Project |10
Project |10 Hobby: Woodworking
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I've been doing woodworking as a hobby since junior year. Our college had a wood lathe for a while but didn't allow students to use the machine. During junior year I worked on getting the lathe into the wood shop and providing a training manual to teach how to safely use the machine to other students. I wanted to personally explore what can be done with the wood lathe and with other woodworking techniques/tools.