Blake Alfson

Background

About Blake Alfson

I have been fortunate to have worked on a variety of mechanical and aerospace ventures, with leadership opportunities throughout college and beyond. These have given me a wide variety of skills including: •Design engineering experience in SolidWorks and other CAD software. At Continuous Composites, I overhauled the primary printing extruder, redesigning it from the ground up focusing on streamlining repairs and aiding modularity, and converting the cooling system to an air-cooled heatsink, decreasing downtime due to overheating by 100%. In addition, I designed and managed development of the second version company xCraft’s flagship drone, the X PlusOne. • Test engineering and mechanical engineering experience. At Continuous Composites, I developed a testing apparatus and I operated the printing machines in a laboratory, using Python to generate machine code. At xCraft, I ran numerous aerospace tests to optimize the components. In addition I utilized my experience in controls theory and vibration analysis to redesign the xCraft camera. Finally, at Rohinni, I ran optical tests on light strips to determine optimal protective coatings. •Highly adaptable and able to manage many projects simultaneously. At Continuous Composites, in addition to being a design engineer and a test engineer, I was tasked with acting as a liaison to Autodesk and working remotely in a Chicago maker space, in addition to writing standard operating procedures for all of the extruder heads. At xCraft, in addition to my design work on several drones, I was tasked with running experiments and with giving lectures to organizations in the community. •Engineering leadership. While at xCraft, I managed a team of interns for the summer, supervising their designs. I was the captain of a rookie FIRST Robotics Team in high school, having started the team from scratch, working on the electrical design for the robot in addition to teaching the new members the proper procedures.