I’ve shown that Elmer accurately calculates a cantilevered beam’s lowest natural frequency, but I wanted to test Elmer on a real part. So I bought a tuning fork off amazon.com and compared the Elmer analytical frequencies to the real life free-free frequencies. Elmer was accurate to within 3%. Methodology: Get tuning fork from the internet…
As a mechanical engineer, I use Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software at work to calculate the way metal parts deform, their stresses, and the frequencies at which they vibrate. I recently found Elmer, a free FEA program. To test how accurate Elmer is, I calculated the lowest vibration frequency of a cantilevered beam using Elmer,…
At work I use computer aided design (CAD) software to make 3D models of aerospace parts. At home I’d always been looking for good free CAD software, but never found what I was looking for. I recently revisited FreeCAD, and it has come far. It is still under active development, but it has a lot…
In 2011 I was granted 11 weeks of personal time from my full time job at GE Aviation, which I used to pursue a passion, building an art project to show at my first Burning Man. This project was my way of re-energizing me, giving me a new challenge and expanding my knowledge. Having grown…
In a conversation with a friend I wondered if one word added to another word would result in a third word. To figure it out, I made a python word addition program. Each word is converted to a base 26 number with A=0, and Z=25. Then you convert each number to base 10, add…
In 2010 I heard a NPR story where a person was making posters of people’s DNA. This piqued my interest. I did a cursory search and was unable to find the story or the website where I could purchase the posters. But then I thought about it a little and decided I’d make the poster…
My senior year of high school I worked on a senior capstone project. I was very excited about playing guitar and programming in macromedia flash at the time, so for my project, I made a guitar tablature player and creator in Macromedia flash. The player streamed guitar fingering and song lyrics across the screen horizontally,…
MXP3 v1.2, Flash MP3 Player (no longer works due to flash updates) Author: Justin Black My senior year of high school I worked on a senior capstone project in macromedia flash, as part of that project I was using Flash’s mp3 player capabilities, which were fairly new at the time. I thought the mp3 capabilities…