Geek (n.)

The word geek is a slang term, noting individuals as "One who is perceived to be overly obsessed with one or more things including those of intellectuality, electronics, etc."

Some of My Stuff

FDM 3D Printer: My New Ender 3

In trying to make a choice on what I should buy with some money, I had to choose between a Playstation 4 (I have been dreaming of owning a Playstation since I was a kid) and a 3D printer, I chose my new Creality Ender 3 (I bought it along with Apurav Jain who is my ex-boss in Mahindra Susten). I bought it on Amazon.in and it is shipped in easy to assemble SKD kits, that come with a detailed instruction manual. It takes about 1.5-2 hour to assemble. I had gone through a lot of youtube reviews on the Ender 3 while it was in transit, and mentally preacticed leveling the bed. After assembly, the mental training took over while leveling the bed for the first time, and the first trial print came out very well. I slice and set up with Cura which has presets for Ender 3, and primarily use coloured PLA in the printer and have also used wood-filled PLA to print things. The most interesting objects that have caught my fancy are "Lithophanes". I made a few lithophanes for my self, apart from some of my collegues and friends. I am very happy with the performance of the printer and happily spend hours printing and exploring. :)

Selection of Sections for Torsion and Bending from Indian Standard Hot Rolled and Cold Formed Sections

This work was done as a systematic approach to compare section shapes and sizes based on their geometrical properties in order to reduce the overall weight of solar trackers during the design phase. It may be noted that the torque-tube is a hollow steel tube that undergoes torsion and bending during operation. It is cearly shown in the essay that the circle is the most optimal shape in "torsion + bending" mode. The vertical post is a column that undergoes bending. Due to it being tall and slender, it may also be succeptible to buckling in two horizontal axes. The essay is given here and the calculations are given in the sheet here.

Damper Sizing for Solar Trackers Through Numerical Analysis Using a Lumped Spring-Mass-Damper Approach

This work was done for creating a systematic approach for selecting or sizing dampers appropriate for a particular tracker system. The approach and the results for a sample tracker system was presented and published at IFToMM Asian Mechanism and Machine Science Asian MMS 2018 at IISc Bengaluru in December 2018. The paper can be downloaded here (will upload soon). This is my first scientific presentation.

This is me presenting at 5th Asian MMS. The conference was held in the IISc Bangalore campus.

Medical Device Innovation through Hardware Hacking

I was a part of the medical device innovation hackathon, organized by BETiC, IIT Bombay as a contestant. With the team, comprising of Dr. Nitish Sancheti, Yash Gupte and Dhruv Mishras and I, we developed a kiosk friendly device for screening patients with Diebetic Neuropathy on the feet. The solution developed was interactive, labourfree and uses well proven methods for the screening. The patient, after the test is recomended on the course of action depending on the severity of his condition.

Drawing Trippy Shapes on Matlab

I love gears. Here is a small presentation about this. I have written simple, noob time-marching codes to draw trippy shapes on Matlab that simulate cycloid drawing machines (in particular, Joe Friedman's Cycloid Drawing Machine). I have written codes with increasing gear train complexity that create trippy shapes. Find the git repository over here. It is a work in progress, as I am now writing a code for John Edmark's Cycloid Drawing Machine, which, I'm finding pretty difficult.

Shapes like these can be made physically using Joe Friedman's Cycloid Drawing Machine. A link to the youtube video is found here.

A friend of mine had my shapes laser etched on circular stainless steel blanks and even got my name etched on them! @pranavgopale

A post shared by Ninad Watve (@ninadwatve) on

My Speech at IIT Bombay IVF 2016:

The following speech was as a representative of PG graduating batch at IIT Bombay in 2016. I was nominated by the new Overall Coordinator of The Student Alumni Relations Cell (OC of SARC) Deepankar Varshney as a speaker. The chief guest of the function was Prof. D B Phatak (Padma Awardee) along with the Deans of Stuent Affars (DoSA) and Alumni and Corporate Relations (ACR) and the Director of the Institute. The speech was appreciated by the chief guest along with the deans and warmly aplauded by the audience during and after the speech.