Caden Kraft
Mechanical Engineer
I am currently a mechanical engineering undergraduate at Iowa State University. I enjoy doing many personal projects that you can read about here as well as leading the PRISUM Solar Car club mechanical team here at Iowa State.
Work Experience
Responsible Engineer
Developed Dragon latch qualification test that increased latch capability for AMS mission. Qualified solar adhesive saving 560k per year
May 2024 - Aug 2024
Product Design Engineer
Engineered fixtures using SolidWorks that both constrained and electrically connected components to a plasma chamber
May 2023 - Aug 2023
Mechanical Design Engineer
Self led development of a new high voltage connector that reduced part count by 350% and cut costs by 42 million dollars per year
Jan 2023 - May 2023
Mechanical Design Engineer
Identified and solved issue plaguing solenoid production for over 6 years. Created a fixture to rework lost yield saving $120,000
May 2022 - Aug 2022
Responsible Engineer
Developed Dragon latch qualification test that increased latch capability for AMS mission. Qualified solar adhesive saving 560k per year
May 2024 - Aug 2024
Product Design Engineer
Engineered fixtures using SolidWorks that both constrained and electrically connected components to a plasma chamber
May 2023 - Aug 2023
Mechanical Design Engineer
Self led development of a new high voltage connector that reduced part count by 350% and cut costs by 42 million dollars per year
Jan 2023 - May 2023
Mechanical Design Engineer
Identified and solved issue plaguing solenoid production for over 6 years. Created a fixture to rework lost yield saving $120,000
May 2022 - Aug 2022
Featured Projects
3D Printed Dual Cycloidal Actuator
This project builds on my previous axial flux motor. To improve the torque output of the motor I designed a cycloidal gearbox that integrates into the current motor design allowing for more torque.
Solar Car HV Bus Bar Distribution
I designed a high voltage distribution assembly for the solar car that centralizes all of our high voltage connections, contactors, and fuses into a centralized location.
The NTPixie, A WiFi Nixie Tube Clock
I've always wanted to make a nixie tube clock but wanted to make one that I could trust was accurate. This was done through syncing the time with NTP servers the same way phones and computers do.
Ironless Axial Flux Motor
Building off my first motor project, I designed and tested an axial flux motor by mathematically calculating all of the motor parameters needed to meet the design requirements that I set.
Solar Car GPS Tracker
For our 2022 solar car race, I designed a simple webpage that tied into our cars live telemetry in order to display the current speeds and location on a map. This allowed us to share our race progress with family and friends.
Creating a 3D Printed Brushless Motor
This was my first attempt at making a motor from scratch. This design is a simple brushless motor made with components I had on hand at the time and taught me quite a lot about motor design and magnetics.
Solar Car Steering Wheel
This was one of my first projects on solar car where I designed a new steering wheel that had its own integrated PCB to minimize the wiring harness connecting it to the rest of the car.
Ghost Blog with Free Webhosting
This is an in depth guide on how I made this very website through locally developing the website and pushing changes to Github pages. This allows me to host this site while paying $0 in hosting.
Single Part Raspberry Pi Compute Cluster
This is a Raspberry Pi cluster that I created where all of the Raspberry Pi's and networking gear can click into a single 3D printed component without the use of any fasteners.
