Colin Jackson, Makerspace Associate and FabLab Assistant, shares about his projects

Colin Jackson is a Sophomore at GMU studying Electrical Engineering and this is his second year as a MIX Makerspace Associate. Colin has been an integral part of the culture and flow of the MIX, often driven by his passion for learning new technologies and helping others. We wanted to know more about the ways he has grown over the past few months and what kinds of opportunities he either faced or challenged himself with. Hear about them here:

What were some of your experiences/plans over the past few months?

“My biggest experience during this summer was exhibiting the RC fixed-wing drone my friends (one of which was Luke) and I made at the OpenSauce 2024 Conference. We were able to meet many of the famous engineering YouTubers that we grew up watching such as Mark Rober, Cody’sLab, Peter Stripol, Michael Reeves and a couple dozen more.

The second experience I had over the summer was building a giant robot arm. I 3D printed it in PLA/PETG and I CNC routed one part out of wood. This was an absurdly frustrating experience that put tension on most of my relationships. But I managed to finish it in about a month and spent around $300.

The last experience I had was programming a website from scratch and hosting it on my own PC for showcasing projects. This website is called https://gmuprojects.com. This also forced me to learn a lot in a very short time because I had never actually programmed a real website before let alone used PHP and JavaScript.

I made a super in-depth document on my experience at open sauce. Here is the link.

What do you look forward to as a MIX makerspace associate and student?

I really look forward to meeting more motivated students. I really feel like most students are capable of so much, but they just don’t try or don’t have the time nor motivation to do so.