I made this entire machine in Solidworks. The complete assembly was over 500,000 parts. At the time I had only taken the one quarter 3D CAD class at the UW so needless to say I had to learn and expand my abilities in SolidWorks quickly.
Since the paper in the machine was light sensitive everything inside the machine had to be automated and light-tight. My focus in undergrad was mechatronics (a hybrid of computer science, electrical and mechanical engineering), so I had a blast debugging each system. The paper welder was especially tricky so much so that I was able to create an adaptive/feedforward control system for it and use it as my Masters in Control Theory project.
Since I had created all the parts, drawings and Assembly drawings I was tasked with figuring out how to assemble the machine for production. I built the first one by hand because reality doesn't always agree with what is on the computer screen. After that first one I worked with the manufacturing guys to come up with the best possible assembly plan and documentation. I learned a lot from those guys.
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Express-Imaging Europa Printer
At my first engineering job I got a taste of product development. After lunch one day I was standing next to Will Reed looking at a cardboard box that was spray painted black and he said to me: "Beren, we are going to make a digital printer." It took us a year and a half and I even got to do a Masters thesis on the paper welder but we made the fastest, highest resolution printer in the world.
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