Thank you OtterFriends for 11.5 years

January 15, 2025January 28, 2025L21 Leave a comment

*UPDATE: My heart goes out to everyone involved and I have no doubt in your skills and passion and that you will succeed wherever you set foot, I’m here for anything you need help with, my contact details are here.

*UPDATE2: Thank you everyone for your kind and encouraging words, I’m overwhelmed by the vast amount of support in these tough times.

In this restructuring event, a lot of people were let go including the remote Mechanical Engineering force in San Diego, the OG brilliant minds from LifeProof, the ones that figured out, developed and delivered fully waterproof mobile device cases while allowing for full functionality, the LifeProof FRE case.

I’m a bit bitter, a bit sad, seeing my coworkers, my brothers in arms of many years, one by one announcing getting the dreaded email including myself, no explanation yet but we had it seen a mile away.

What makes FRE special? It’s just a waterproof case, why not use a Ziploc bag? Well, once you seal a phone device in a watertight enclosure, you need to worry about sound, about the microphones and how they interact with the software algorithms, the cameras with optically clear lenses and the flash that wants to bleed light wherever it can. And the touchscreen, it needs to seal out 100%, prevent it from creating those rainbow ring artifacts, reduce fingerprints, add scratch resistance, etc., the materials used are also tested for ultraviolet degradation, common solutions (think lotions, sunscreen, alcohol, etc.), button forces, latch retention… and, yeah, drops, the case should continue being waterproof after being dropped, all in a very sleek package that rivals drop protection only cases in size and style. Oh, and it has to be produced millions of times, assembled and tested, yes, each case is tested for water ingress before packaging.

Back to the situation, maybe it was a good thing, maybe it was time, there was no development career for my position and salary was capped for many years. But what if… what if that’s what I wanted to do, to continue the challenges of designing and developing for new series, new devices, maybe I wanted to continue for 10 more years. Maybe there is something else waiting and I needed a push, after all, I wouldn’t been here if it wasn’t for these life nudges.

But oh well, after 11.5 years in the company seeing the evolution from LifeProof to OtterBox and everything in between, my daughter was born a few months before starting here, I’m very grateful to have had the opportunity to build, shape and implement a modeling infrastructure that helped reduce design time from months to weeks to days in some “cases”, the foundation has been baked-in across all case series templates and it’s amazing to see it develop and deploy way further by the team of awesome Mechanical Designers (YOU’RE NOT A CAD DESIGNER, YOU’RE A MECHANICAL DESIGNER, keep the fight on); I’m grateful for being part of the design and development of our most challenging product series, I’m grateful for the opportunity to visit OEM partners and factories across the sea, and out-of-state events; I’m grateful for all the ongoing learning and development that an environment like this provides; but above everything else, I’m grateful to have worked with the most amazing engineering minds here and in Fort Collins, seeing them “kick-ass” solving issues (features) that new devices constantly threw at us, and their growth across all these years, our managers who always put their peers before them and doing the best with what the company provided, and my mountain biking peers whose motivation sparked back my interest in the sport and adventure.

Thank you everyone.

So, what’s next?

I have gone through elevator cab building and designing, shipboard furniture design, injection molding tooling design, then product design and development, I can say that I have enjoyed the last one the most but I’m not afraid of venturing into other areas, I’m very interested in additive manufacturing (ref this website), maybe design services? I can’t be too picky, I have a lifetime project to take care of which is my family, but I hope that the answer comes sooner rather than later.

Thank you for everything…

San Diego

Colorado

Suzhou

Suwon

Seattle

Charlotte Motor Speedway

3D Printing Corner

January 2, 2025L21 Leave a comment

Recently consolidated and organized my 3D printing corner and here it is going from the bottom-up left to right:

Bottom shelf: Bulk filament storage, first two containers were air sealed using weatherstripping, there’s also two air-tight cereal box containers which will be transformed into sealed individual filament dispensers

Next shelf: Small materials, tools and supplies, batteries, magnets, bearings, glue/resin, foam and tooling and replacement parts for the two printers

Printer shelf:

Ender 3 Pro converted into V2 with custom upgrade kit from 1stLayer which included a bigger and color LCD screen, upgraded board with silent steppers. Also installed a direct extruder kit, BL Touch for automatic bed leveling, and a Creality Cloud module. I’m keeping this printer with a 1mm nozzle to tackle bigger structural prints where detail and speed aren’t as important. There’s also the possibility to increase the print height with existing materials.
Bambu Lab P1S, this is the intermediate level of their printers, twice and sometimes thrice as fast as the Ender, CoreXY which eliminates bed slinging for more accurate prints, fully enclosed and as easy to use as an inkjet paper printer.

Top shelf: filament dispensing and storage, there’s some recently used filament spools inside vacuum sealed bags, a dual filament dryer which I use to also dry desiccant and the amazing Bambu Lab AMS (Automatic Material System) which is the next biggest thing for 3D printing. I got this AMS as a bundle with the P1S and I totally love it, besides multi-color printing, it contains four material/color spools ready to go at any given time in a semi-sealed container. I printed desiccant containers to add inside to help reduce/eliminate moisture.

This was a quick tour, nothing much or big but finally organized and ready to go.

Keyboard MegaShelf, sliding keyboard tray

December 14, 2024January 23, 2025L21 Leave a comment

This is a set of brackets that mounts a shelf that slides under a desk.

Hi! This design is the result of my need to free desk space and lower the keyboard height as the desk is too tall for me. I spent over an hour looking for sliding keyboard trays and none met my needs/wants.

Designed in SolidWorks for Makers, printed with a Creality Ender 3 V2 printer with custom 1st Layer firmware and board.

Features:

Big enough to hold plenty of peripherals and more
Slides under desk to reduce footprint and add some dust protection
Solid. Very solid. Even when extended, the natural binding of the peripheral and hand weight “locks” the shelf in any position
Uses common or easily available materials, this aluminum extrusion is very stiff and practical
Can be adapted to any desk and shelf size without changing the 3D prints, fully dependent on the extrusion lengths

Designed for 3D printing, considerations:

The front desk mount piece uses four screws since it will hold most of the weight
The recommended print orientation maximizes the layers along the shear forces
No supports required, nada.
The extrusion mating parts include an inner “rib” that makes contact in the extrusion slots before the side walls to reduce sliding friction and considerably increasing the holding strength
Not only functional, but also spent some time shaping for a nicer look and feel

Downsides:

It binds when trying to slide-in or out caused by uneven force on the ends when doing so, the solution is to frame the shelf with additional length-wise aluminum extrusion to force squareness
It doesn’t make tacos but it does free your desk to hold them

For the future: Can’t stop thinking about using v-slot wheels for that smooth and satisfying slide but initial thoughts makes it look clunky, obtrusive, and more expensive. But I like the challenge and more options are good so stay tuned!

All-in-all, I’m extremely happy with this solution, it’s very solid, holds peripherals clearing my desk and stows away. I’m publishing this free hoping that my time and effort go further than just meeting my needs.

Published and available to download in Maker World