Whats up everybody,

My name is Cole Crawford and I am a junior Mechanical Engineering major here at Rice. I am from Duncan College (aka the best college) and I am heavily involved in Rice Eclipse, the undergraduate aerospace organization here on campus. Within that organization I’m the Propulsion team lead, which means that I’m in charge of all hybrid rocketry projects that are ongoing in the club. In addition, I’m also a lab assistant at the OEDK, which allows me to go into the machine shop whenever I want, my favorite past time.

My most proud engineering achievement thus far has to be the Mk 1.1, a hybrid rocket test engine for Rice Eclipse. All told, it took us over a year as a team to brainstorm, design, build and finally test the engine, and it has to be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Being able to start from the ground up and create something with your own two hands that actually does what it is meant to do is one of the best experiences you can possibly have, in my opinion. Check out our website here and the test fire of the Mk 1.1 here.

Something that I really want to make, as stupid as it sounds, is a shelf for my room. I have alot of crap in my dorm room that doesn’t have a place to sit, and having some extra space to store things would be a god-send. Since I’m a college student and have no money, building my own shelving unit seemed like the best option.

Now to address the real root of this post, why I am in 210. I’m taking ENGI 210 to be able to fulfill a requirement for the Engineering Design Minor, but also to learn more about prototyping and manufacturing methods. Since I want to be a design engineer, the skills learned in this class should serve me well in the future. One specific thing that I hope to learn from this class is how to mold and cast things as that is something that I have no experience in.

This is my first blog post ever if you can’t tell already so don’t judge me too hard. Keep reading my other posts if you want. If not, that’s OK too.

Peace.