My Personal Interests

If I would try to find two bins in which I had to sort my interests, the first bin would be probably called ‘creativity’ and the second bin would be called ‘complex systems’. Two things that come in handy for my profession but keep me working on after main work.

3D printing

What comes in handy for rapid prototyping ideas is 3D printing. I build two 3D printer kits before I constructed and build my custom 3D printer. The first one I had was a Prusa clone which had major drawbacks like a shakey printing surface, no heated bed, small size and it was very loud.

My first 3D printer

After two years I bought a cheap but big CoreXY printer from China. The frame was quite instable, I had many problems with the printing head and the heat bed was too cold because of the big surface. I decided to use most of the frame, strengthen it and use different custom components.

I stabelized the frame and used all custom components for xy-axis.

The electric installation - the usual mess.

X-rail and custom head mount design.

Y-axis custom design.

The printer in its almost-finished state (spoiler: it is never finished)

I decided to install a second dedicated 24V PSU for the heat bed. The bed is heating up in a minute and the maximum temperature has doubled.

Also I installed a bed level sensor - such a valuable investment!

Some random print results:

Building and configuring it from scratch was quite a big project but I am very happy with the result.

I also like to construct models with SCAD, which is basically a programming language for constructing 3D models. Those models are highly customizable and parameterized. You can check some of them out on my thingiverse page. In my opinion 3d printing is such a great oportunity for refurbishing things, but personally it is more of a creative tool - a painting is 2D but in 3D a whole dimension is added and it always blows my mind again if I have an idea in my mind, I construct the idea with the computer and only a few hours later I hold a real-life 3D object in my hands - unlimited possibilities!

Synthesizer

Self-build analog modular synthesizer. It is never finished.

Synthesizer in action: I configured the synthesizer for generating a kick-ass bass sequence.

Synthesizer in action: Demonstration about my own-design kick module.

Synthesizer in action: Synthesizing a simple sequence with drums.

Music Making

Enough rave, but seriously: creativity is very important and desireable for me. Other creative hobbys of mine include photography, drawing and I added recently music to the list. I like to play guitar, jamming with friends or producing all kinds of differnt ([sometimes distopic and/or strange) music myself. In particular, I like to explore different subgenres and fancy crossovers.

Photography

I like photography. Some random images:

Retro Video Games

Last but not least I am a big fan and collector of retro video games, especially N64 and SNES.

Italian Espresso Machines

I restaurated a Gaggia classic espresso machine which I found on a dusty cupboard at my old workplace. It is so nice to make really good espresso with it.

Drones

I have a deep passion for building all kind of things. Examples are drones, small gadgets and also alot of non-tech related things.