DESIGN. PRINT.
TEST. REPEAT.

I get a lot of inspiration for my designs from nostalgia and things I remember from my childhood, but what really got me into designing in the first place was my kids. Making things for them that never existed before and seeing how happy it makes them is by far my biggest inspiration.

The tool I use the most is Fusion 360. I wouldn’t consider myself an expert by any means, and I’m still learning every day, but I’ve gotten to the point where I can make most of my designs without having to pull up a how-to video on YouTube.

If I had to pick one design I’m most proud of, it would probably be a wall art piece I made. It’s huge—about 5 feet by 3 feet—and made up of 15 separate tiles printed on my H2C. The design uses 14 colors across the different layers, so it ended up being a pretty involved project.

I originally made it for my own house, but when my dad saw it, he loved it and asked if he could hang it at his place instead. That meant a lot to me. Seeing something I designed and put that much time into being appreciated by someone I respect so much made that piece stand out more than anything else I’ve made.

I’ve only been designing for a little over a year, so I still consider myself pretty new. But the biggest piece of advice I’d give is to learn the correct way to do something first instead of learning the shortcut first.

It might take a little longer in the beginning, but it makes things much easier later when your designs get more complicated and you start applying more advanced techniques. Building good habits early saves you from having to unlearn bad ones down the road.

Lately I’ve been more interested in experimenting than just making another variation of something that already exists. I’ve been testing some unusual materials, including metal-filled PLA and foaming flexible filaments, to really understand how they print and what makes them different.

Once I get the settings dialed in and understand their strengths and limitations, I want to design around those properties and see what kinds of models they naturally lend themselves to.

That’s the kind of work I’m most excited about right now—learning what a material can do first, then designing something that takes advantage of it.