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Hunter Whaples.
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Ideas, put into practice

Projects.

A collection of engineering, research, and hands-on projects.
Some built with teams, some built out of curiosity.

Research, prototypes, and earlier work8 projects
The Magprint prototype, with a circular rotating magnetic array around the build region of an Autodesk Ember printer.↗
Printer design & magnetic materialsResearch prototype

Magprint: Magnetically Aligned SLA

An SLA printer built around a rotating Halbach array to control magnetic alignment during fabrication.

Side view of a transparent gummy-bear-shaped print held in a glass container.↗
Polymers & additive manufacturingMIT research

Volumetric Additive Manufacturing

Building MIT’s first tomographic volumetric 3D printer with Prof. TJ Wallin, connecting polymers, optics, and computation.

Rows of heliostats in a solar test field with an illuminated receiver tower on the left.↗
High-temperature energy systems2021–2024

Ultra-High Temperature Solar Thermal Air Receiver

On-sun test engineering, optical simulation, and technoeconomic modeling for a silicon carbide solar thermal air receiver.

The ICARUS prototype vehicle and robotic arm beside mirrored heliostats at a solar field.↗
Autonomy & perception2021 prototype

Autonomous Vehicle for Solar Thermal Maintenance

Leading autonomy and guidance development for ICARUS, a prototype vehicle for autonomous heliostat cleaning.

Solar panels on a hillside in Myanmar, with two people walking past the array.↗
Energy & data2021

Solar minigrid reliability

Using time-series anomaly detection to help operators identify problems in rural solar minigrids before failure.

Close-up of a factory display showing production goals and actual output.↗
Manufacturing & process2019

Lean manufacturing at Ametek Ameron

Redesigning an aircraft oxygen cylinder production line around lean manufacturing, people, and processes.

Diagram of the Halon 1301 purification target, increasing from 96 percent to 99.7 percent purity through distillation.↗
Thermal & separation systems2019

Halon recovery through distillation

Designing a miniature distillation system to refine recovered Halon 1301 from 96% to 99.7% purity.

Skateboards and a scooter stored together in a campus rack.↗
Hardware & making2018

TapLok

A tap-card skateboard lock, built in twelve hours to make campus racks more secure without slowing anyone down.

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