Midway Update With Folio Photonics

When I last provided an update three weeks ago, I was excited to get down to work with Folio Photonics. Now, as I am at the midpoint of my time with the company, I am proud of what I’ve accomplished and curious about what challenges I will have the opportunity to face next.

Everything about my time at Folio Photonics thus far has served as an invaluable stepping stone for my career. Recently, I’ve wrapped up multiple drafts of modeling a custom holder for a confocal microscope to accommodate the optical disks that the company needs to study. While I may have been able to summarize my accomplishments thus far in one sentence, explaining the journey could take up a short novel. I started out my sketching and brainstorming the overall shape and feel of the device. This was a particular challenge for designing the spring loaded arm that locks the disk in place. In my varied yet short career using SolidWorks, I had yet to ever design something that utilizes a spring. After a good handful of YouTube videos and scribbled on pieces of scratch paper, I finally landed on a design. I planned to purchase a torsion coil spring from McMaster-Carr (a common parts supplier) in order to provide the necessary force to hold down the disk. After using SolidWorks to completely model every part and assemble it all together, I was ready to present my work.

All in all, the people at Folio seemed rather pleased with what I put together. Aside from a couple small tweaks, they saw only one glaring problem- the spring. As they correctly pointed out, the spring I originally planned to use was far too big for the application. After getting to crack open the original device that I was modeling this disk holder after, we found out that just a small flat spring with a couple coils would do the trick just fine. After heading back to the drawing board and changing around my design, I came out with a far cleaner and sleeker design using a custom spring that I am very proud of.

Finally, I created technical drawings for every single part, as well as a detailed assembly drawing that shows the machinist how to put everything together. I bundled these up in a .zip file and sent it off to Alpha Tool & Mold in Cleveland to get a quote. I’m ecstatic to one day see something that I designed in SolidWorks come to life. This experience will be a first for me and something that I’ll remember for a long, long time. A special thanks to the Veale Institute for Entrepreneurship and Folio Photonics for making this all possible.