Failed Projects

World Land Speed Record Motorcycle (2019)

I started this project junior year of high school with the objective of setting a world land speed record for an electric streamlined motorcycle under 300kg. I went through the full design process corresponding with the officials of the event to ensure that my motorcycle would pass technical inspection. The project began with the realization that many world land speed records have yet to be set, so all that would need to be done is pass scrutineering and set a minimum speed to set a land speed record. I CADed the entire motorcycle during my spring break and broke ground the beginning of summer. I learned the basics of MIG welding as well as metalworking during the main frame assembly. Unfortunately,  due to unknown import tariffs for large ticket items like electric motors from China, I quickly ran out of money with much of the purchases yet to be ordered. This caused me to cancel the project midway through due to lack of funding. 

Through this process I learned so much about designing and managing a large scale project as well as collaborating with both vendors and competition management. 

Electric Skateboard (2019)

This project’s objective was to recycle my old electric skateboard with a shot battery into a new, smaller, skateboard that I could bring with me to college and ride around campus. I purchased a new smaller deck with a kick tail which would allow me to be more maneuverable than my previous bulky long board. After this, I transferred all of the major electrical components to the new deck and fabricated and painted a welded steel enclosure for my battery and speed controller in USC colors. The downfall of this project was the batteries. I custom fabricated my own batteries using old Li-Po cells from my World Land Speed Record Motorcycle failed project. I soldered the Li-Po cells together which is a questionable practice at best. Overall, the battery system was built poorly and was not safe in case of any shorts. The skateboard did work for a few weeks but was ultimately scrapped due to the battery failing and danger of use. I might re-approach this project later with a better battery design but for now it is shelved.

This project reinforced a lot of my skills with metal fabrication and taking a project from concept to execution and completion using only tools I had on hand. I really enjoyed working on this project and also learned a lot about battery systems.

Magic Mirror (2020)

The intention of this project was to create “smart” mirrors that displayed time, date, weather, news, and other critical information to the user through a two way mirror utilizing MagicMirror open source software. The design was essentially a box housing a Raspberry Pi Zero W, power cables, and a secondhand monitor behind a 2 way mirror film covering a piece of glass. The goal of this project was to potentially make a marketable product to college students as a dorm room accessory.

There was a few large flaws in the project that led to its failure. Mainly, the safety and practicality of the 2-way glass system. The current system being used consisted of a piece of non-laminated glass with a 2-way mirror film applied to it. This is a poor system as the non-laminated glass is extremely fragile and very dangerous when broken, leading to user injury if that occurs. The 2-way mirror film was also of poor quality and wasn’t particularly reflective as well as was transparent defeating the purpose. Thus, in order to have a safe and quality 2-way mirror it would need to be purchased. This would be exceedingly expensive and remove any potential margins from raw material cost to sale. Thus the project was a failure due to its lack of marketability. 

While the project failed I still learned a lot about designing for manufacturing as well as maintaining a simple Bill of Materials and designing a product for sale to a consumer. Each of these skills will help me in my future projects, both engineering and entrepreneurial.