CAD + CAM Skills

I have sharpened my CAD + CAM skills through coursework at MIT and UCLA. Below is an example of these skills for my Space Hardware Design class in 2013.

ELFIN Antenna Deployment

The antenna design for the ELFIN project has undergone several radical changes over the past year. The previous student team from MAE 161D had devised a design using AFRL fiberglass spring tape, chosen for the magnetic cleanliness of its Be-Cu metallic elements. The last antenna deployment mechanism stowed the antenna elements within the chassis of the spacecraft itself; this design also employed a nylon monofilament burn wire system, which had a 100% success rate in deployment tests.

When Cubesat Design Specification Rev. 13 was released, it added an allowance for a “Tuna Can” volume on the top face of any Cubesat being launched from a PPOD. This allows for an additional cylindrical volume allowance of 6.4 cm diameter by 3.6 cm height, taking advantage of the empty space within the PPOD spring. The ELFIN team determined that, given the extreme importance of volumetric efficiency, an Antenna Deployment Mechanism (ADM) should be redesigned to take advantage of this newly-allowed volume allocation. By moving all or most of the ADM to the outside face of the spacecraft, more volume margin could be allocated for other mission-critical instruments.