Research & Development Engineering Intern · Austin, TX · May–Aug 2026
rPP FGF work from recycled feedstock to printed drone frames, BlackBot printer restoration and calibration, and a Beacon Mount for Linear Rail (BMLR) designed for production.
Closing the loop from waste polymer to functional parts on large-format FGF printers
At Re:3D in Austin I worked R&D across material reclamation, FGF print process development, and machine recovery. The through-line was getting reclaimed polypropylene into reliable prints, then proving the machines and tooling around that process.
Three threads defined the summer: an rPP drone-frame pipeline from canister feedstock to weighed print iterations, restoring and dialing in BlackBot, and designing the Beacon Mount for Linear Rail now entering production.
From filter-canister feedstock to a weighed FGF print iteration
Spent military filter canisters are a steady polypropylene waste stream, but adhesives and contaminants make them unprintable as-received. I worked the reclamation path — clean the canister bodies, granulate to rPP pellet feedstock sized for fused granulate fabrication — so the material could run on Re:3D’s pellet printers without virgin resin.
Reclaimed rPP does not behave like virgin filament. I iterated drone-frame geometry for FGF warp, bead geometry, and layer adhesion, and checked structural loads in SolidWorks FEA (~3.4× factor of safety at max throttle). Final printed iteration: 139.7 g on the scale.
Co-author on a publication related to this drone work, currently under Department of War (DOW) review. Public link coming soon once cleared.
Recycled canister feedstock beside the printed drone frame made from reclaimed rPP.
Weight validation of the last frame iteration — 139.7 g on the bench scale.
Bringing a large-format printer back into reliable production
Benchy after BlackBot repair and tuning — clean layers, bridges, and overhangs.
A large part of the summer was diagnosing and repairing idle printers — Klipper MCU faults, stepper issues, mechanical wear — and returning them to production with upgraded components. BlackBot was the long-running restoration target.
After hardware and firmware work, calibration prints confirmed the machine was back within tolerance. The blue Benchy is a quick visual check that extrusion, motion, and cooling were aligned for production work again.
Custom sensor mount — design through production adoption
Designed the Beacon Mount for Linear Rail (BMLR) to hold a beacon probe on toolheads that ride linear rails. The mount positions the sensor board cleanly next to the hotend without fighting the existing carriage hardware.
The part moved from a shop fix into a production component for machines at Re:3D — design intent validated on the toolhead, then adopted for repeat builds rather than one-off prints.
Custom beacon mount installed on a linear-rail carriage — designed here, now going into production.
What the summer produced
Reclamation work turned a waste canister stream into printable rPP, then into functional FGF drone frames with measured mass and FEA-backed load margin.
BlackBot returned to calibrated production use, and BMLR shipped from a custom design into the production parts list for linear-rail machines.