Molybdenum Souvenirs

For the backstory of where these molybdenum parts came from in the first place, see my Master's Research. When I graduated from Tech (the second [and final] time), I took with me a few Mo samples with the intent of making them into something. What that something would be was uncertain until I reflected on all the people (the proverbial "village") that have helped and supported me throughout my engineering career. With an objective now in sight, I now only needed a product; a few renderings in Blender later and it was off to building.

A fair portion of this project was balanced in commercial versus bespoke components. The battery case, LED, and plastic cover, for example, could be purchased from online. The wooden base to hold them all, however, could not. Something that I had not encountered in my personal project career was working with vendors for custom parts, and doing so for this led me to the kindest people imaginable - whose hard work in turning my CAD files into reality. After staining and finishing all 23 bases, the DFM principles I used made the final assembly easy.

This was a very rewarding project, which put a lot of different skills to use. A lot of what made this possible was Design For Manufacturing, which made making 23 nearly identical assemblies fairly easy. Being able to carve out (literally) parts in the wooden base to make assembly quick was a big help. Making more than a handful of these meant some components failed, like switches that didn't work and wooden bases that had big knurls in them. This was an important lesson for me in yield, and ordering the correct amount to finish.