Drafting 10 Projects 2025:

Gravity Car Project (with Brendan and Tristan):

I created the axle stoppers on the inside of the gravity car, along with a few stickers on the wheels.

Fusion 360 Bath Bomb Mold Designs:

Using Fusion 360, I created 3 different bath bomb mold designs and 3D printed one of them for my friend.

Autodesk Make it Move Challenge Submission:

Better details on the project in the subpage accessed by hovering over this page with the mouse.
Career Discovery Project:

For this project, I chose to create a presentation on Software Engineering as my career, and created an RPG-style website game programmed with Javascript to go along with it.

This is a snippet of code that my game uses.

Selecting an attack will bring up a command bar that requires you to input the correct Javascript command line in order for the attack to land

Mini Van de Graaff Generator (STEAM Fair Project)

I made a Homemade Van de Graaff generator that electrifies the dome at the top when powered on. The Van de Graaff generator is a machine that makes static electricity from a moving belt that brings electrons to a dome, allowing the electrons to build up inside. The machine was first invented in 1929 by Robert J. Van de Graaff using objects like a tin can and silk, and is used in other machines like particle accelerators and creating x-ray beams. The generator also serves as a way to demonstrate how static electricity works and how like charges repel and opposites attract.

Materials

• 3 Acrylic Discs (Base)
• 6 Nylon Spacers
• 1 Acrylic Tube (Body)
• 1 Stainless Steel Ball (Dome)
• 1 Glass Straw (Upper Roller)
• 1 Teflon Rod (Lower Roller)
• 1 Exercise Band (Belt)
• 2 Wires (Top and Bottom Combs)
• 1 Metal Rod (Grounding Rod)
• Aluminum Tape
• Electrical Tape

(The acrylic tube and exercise band used for the generator)

How Does This Work?

A Van de Graaff Generator works by pulling electrons from a ground source through a moving belt and brings them to a dome which stores the charge. The energy is created from a belt rolling across material that gains electrons easily, sticking to the belt and bringing it to the top, where material that loses electrons easily brings them to a collector comb attached to a metal dome. This occurs because of the Triboelectric Effect, where a material that tends to be positively charged rubs against a material that tends to be negatively charged, creating friction and pulling electrons from the positively charged to the negatively charged. These generators usually consist of an insulative body, 2 rollers on opposite ends of the triboelectric series, an insulative belt, 2 collector combs with one attached to the dome and another connected to a ground source, and a conductive dome.

(The Van de Graaff dome I used for my project)

Process

Before making the design I have now, I tried to build a different version by 3D printing with PLA. For this version, I started off by designing the body and rollers in Fusion 360, then physically building it at home. After scrapping it, I then begin building a revised design, in which me and my dad drove to multiple hardware stores to purchase materials we didn’t have at home like a Teflon rod and an acrylic tube. Then, we constructed a base for the generator using acrylic discs and drilled a hole in to fit the acrylic tube to act as the body. Next, we deconstructed a pen to use the ink chamber as a tube that could be attached to piece of Teflon and a motor to spin it. After, we put the final pieces in their place, including the upper roller of glass, the top and bottom combs, the elastic belt, and the dome, resulting in a final product that is capable of creating a charge.

(Scrapped materials used in the first iteration of my design)

The Original Design

Originally, my design used a 3D printed PLA body and rollers, a hand crank, and a soda can dome. I tried to make my design somewhat cost-effective and easy to use, but the design simply did not work as intended after I finished building it. While I’m not entirely sure what exactly went wrong here, some possible factors such as the dome being impossible to fully enclose, the rollers failing to transfer charge, the belt failing to hold said charge, and the crank not spinning fast enough could have played a part in its failure. Whatever it was, I ultimately scrapped this design and had to rush with assistance from my dad to create a better working design with higher quality materials.

(My 1st Van de Graaff generator design that failed)

Conclusion

My final thoughts on doing this project are very mixed. While it’s great that the generator works in the end, the stress from my original design failing and the time loss definitely made this project a lot more stressful than in should be. That first design costed a lot of time, so having to scrap it was definitely a hard choice. On the other hand, the second design I have now is quite satisfactory considering the lack of time I had after. Something I learned while doing this project is that projects involving static electricity, such as this one, can be very finicky and risky to invest time in. In my opinion, the final product definitely isn’t perfect, but succeeded anyways, and could be interesting to build on for another project in the future. I am happy with what I have currently and hope to resolve a few of its flaws sometime.