I am a person who likes to tinker and experiment with stuff, designing new things and modifying existing ones. I live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area at 5252 RPM Drive near where Torque Street and Horsepower Lane cross. I enjoy designing and building stuff for money during the day and I tinker in the garage at night.
Professionally I work as a mechanical and electrical designer of systems and industrial products. I am an expert user of Solidworks mechanical design software and I have almost 20 years experience working in various diverse industries. I hold more that one patent for original system designs and I speak fluent Spanish.
I am familiar with ANSI Y-14 drafting standards, high volume manufacturing, machined part design, sheet metal design, molded and cast parts. Professionally I have also designed motor control systems, positioning systems and I have built many many many prototypes for my employers. In addition to messing around with stuff in my garage I also like to play the guitar, write music and hike.
This Blog is a collection of some of the things that I am building in my spare time in my garage. I decided to document what I am doing in this way because it is easier than emailing pictures to everyone that I know every time I build something! For the most part I have kept track of, documented and photographed my projects as I built them and I will add them a few at a time to the blog as I get organized. If you would like to contact me email me at ottobelden@yahoo.com
Do not rely upon any information you read in my blog (or the links I provide) without independent verification of accuracy. I have no responsibility for anything that you do, decide to do or think of doing after reading this blog because this blog is not intended to encourage, educate, entice or suggest that you try any of the things that I write about. Generally and as a matter of practice (before doing anything like getting out of bed in the morning) you should be sure that you know what you are doing and take adequate safety precautions to prevent injury or other damage to your person and others.
Permissions and Copyright:
I recently (July 2010) had some of the material from my blog copied to another site without attribution to me or with my permission. Although flattered I feel that I should do something about it. Maybe there is nothing I can do but in response I have added a Creative Commons License to the content of this Blog the specifics of which can be found HERE.
Please feel free to use PORTIONS of my work in this blog under the conditions of the license which in essence says: You can copy, adapt and share under the same rights as long as you don't use anything on my blog for commercial use and you attribute the content to me and provide a link to my blog. You don't even have to ask me if all you want to do is use part of of a post!
Please feel free to use INDIVIDUAL POSTS IN THEIR ENTIRETY from this blog under the conditions of the license, if you EMAIL ME and GET MY PERMISSION to do so first. That way I can link to your site and you will of course be attributing and linking back to mine. After all if you are copying an entire post you are not just using it as an example or adapting it - you are copying it!
I blog about the things that I am doing and post it all on the web for the purposes of sharing with others (friends and strangers). I just appreciate a 'shout out' as they say for anything that I have done!!
