Hello Rice Blogs! My name’s Liam McConnico-Blanchet, I’m a senior at McMurtry studying finance with a minor in engineering design. I used to be a chemical engineering major, and when I pivoted to finance I wanted to keep a little bit of my engineering side with me, hence my infatuation with the OEDK.

I love roaming around the OEDK looking at what gizmos are in construction, and thinking of what parts of ideas I can steal to make an amalgamation by the end of the semester. I’ve just co-founded a club focusing on sustainable water development that stemmed from an incredible experience I had in the iSEED Mexico program this past summer, working alongside Isla Urbana.

As someone who’s interested in sustainability, I’ve explored the field in a variety of ways, including through some solar panels I made in high school that revolved around the usage of various fruit concentrates to absorb energy. Instead of having to go through the arduous process that generally accompanies solar panel making, these solar cells are makeable in around 10 minutes each, and a certain high school project of mine revolved around making hundreds of them. Eventually, even though it isn’t even close to tangentially related to solar panels, I would love to forge my own sword like a blacksmith. A cousin of mine recently forged his own knife, and talked about how good of a time he had doing it that it got me curious as to how swords were made. A dozen episodes of Forged in Fire later, and I was hooked on the idea of making my own sword. I’m not sure that EDES 210 will help in the regard of making a sword in terms of the actual making process, but I think that by taking a class where I learn my way around various tools in the workshop, that the thinking process will carry over to using a forge.

One thing I hope to learn specifically in EDES 210 is the art of 3D-printing. I have a little experience using TinkerCAD for 3D printing in high school as well as making models for 3D objects, but I want to get to the level where my imagination really is the limit. As of right now, my 3D printing philosophy is just to brute force everything until it works, and not only is this incredibly inefficient, it also kind of sucks to do. As such, I want to learn new 3D printing techniques with newer, more complete software so I can make my dreams reality. Additionally, I’m hoping to complete a previous project from EDES 301 that involves making a lightsaber from scratch. Currently, it’s just a breadboard with wiring and lights duct taped to a stick, and ideally I’d like to make it resemble more closely to a lightsaber. Hopefully I can learn how to make a casing for the lights of the lightsaber, as well as a hilt to really complete the aesthetics.