Selected Work

Dylan
Pires.

Versatile mechanical engineer, recent MSc graduate from ETH Zürich, with broad interests and expertise in additive manufacturing, computer aided engineering, and product development.

A selection of relevant projects from the last couple of years, spanning experimental non-planar FDM printing, proof-of-concept work in the medical field, and metal AM for motorsport. Prepared as an application for the Additive Manufacturing Intern role at On.

Author Dylan Cernadela Pires MSc Mechanical Engineering, ETH Zürich

Contact dylan.prs@hotmail.com Zürich, Switzerland

For On - AM Intern Application portfolio

Dylan Pires · Portfolio01

Cover Letter

Why On, Why Now

Why On, Why Now.

I have always been curious about how things work, what's inside them, how they're made, and how they could be made better. That curiosity is what led me to mechanical engineering, and it's what led me, right after high school, to buy my first 3D printer. The Ender 3 is hardly a glamorous machine, but getting it running and making my first parts with it was the moment I understood what additive manufacturing could be. That excitement never left. Through my studies at ETH I was able to go deeper, both in theory and in hands-on project work, and AM became the thread running through most of what I worked on.

What draws me to the Dream On Labs team specifically is the chance to work alongside industry experts and with machines that sit at the real frontier of the technology, on products that actually reach people. I know that kind of environment would push me forward, and I'm also someone who brings things to the table: I like identifying problems early, proposing solutions, and seeing them through with the team.

The timing feels right too. Last year I did an internship at a startup building electric boats, which taught me a lot about moving fast in a small team. Being a recent graduate, I now want to experience how things work at a larger, international company, and On's internship programme seems like exactly the right bridge. The way it was described at the CareerFairy livestream, and the people I've seen representing On, made it clear this is a place where the internship is taken seriously: there is a proper onboarding, real projects with real responsibility from early on, and a whole cohort of interns starting at the same time. Being able to share that experience with people joining from different parts of the company, learning from each other and getting to know On from multiple angles at once, sounds like a great way to feel part of something from day one. The prospect of continuing at On beyond the internship is something I find genuinely motivating, not just as a career step but because right now it feels like I'd want to stay given the opportunity. I would love the chance to contribute to the team and I am confident I would be a great fit.

Dylan Pires · Portfolio02

Contents

Seven projects

Selected work.

01

G-code Modulator Self-built tool for parametric toolpath modulation in FDM

Web · Python · CAM · FDM

02

EVLP Lung Chamber Proof-of-concept rotating chamber for ex-vivo lung perfusion

Medical · FDM · Product Dev

03

Kitchen Scale Redesign Industrial design exercise, KTH exchange semester

Industrial Design · FDM · Blender

04

Motor Cooling Case LPBF wheel carrier + cooling jacket, AMZ Racing

LPBF · NX · FEM · DfAM

05

Pop-Pop Boat Thermal-driven micro engine, LPBF

LPBF · NX · Thermo

06

Latrine Emptying Device Hands-on team project, low-resource sanitation

Product Dev · Granta · Group

07

Robotic Hand Early self-initiated FDM project

Fusion 360 · FDM

Contents03

01

G-code Modulator.

A browser-based tool I built to manipulate sliced G-code parametrically, going one level deeper than what any slicer or CAM tool exposes today.

Slicers expose layer-level controls: wall counts, infill density, layer heights. They do not expose the toolpath itself. The G-code Modulator I built works one level deeper: it ingests sliced G-code and applies parametric transforms directly to the X/Y/Z coordinates of every move. Layer lines, which slicers and printer manufacturers usually treat as defects to be hidden, become a deliberate design feature you can shape. The tool is live at gcode.dylanpires.com.

Fig. 1.1 - The G-code Modulator. Sliders drive parametric transforms; the viewer rebuilds the toolpath in real time.

Fig. 1.2 - Example output #1

Fig. 1.3 - Example output #2

Fig. 1.4 - Example output #3

Fig. 1.5 - Functional part made with the tool: lampshade

Fig. 1.6 - Functional part made with the tool: plant pot

01 · G-code Modulator03

02

EVLP Lung Chamber.

A rotating chamber for ex-vivo lung perfusion, taken from first sketch to a working proof of concept through four FDM-printed design iterations in one semester.

Semester thesis at ETH PDZ. The brief: design a chamber that holds and rotates a donor lung during ex-vivo perfusion, to test whether changing orientation slows degradation. No existing solution to reference, so the design had to be developed from scratch.

Four FDM-printed iterations, each addressing the failure mode of the previous one. Each version was printed in-house, assembled, and tested before the next geometry was started. The fast print-test-redesign loop was what made it feasible as a semester project. The fourth iteration held and rotated a real porcine lung during simultaneous ventilation and perfusion, validating the concept.

Fig. 2.1 - V1 → V4. Each prototype was FDM-printed and tested; each failure mode informed the next geometry.

Fig. 2.2 - V4 CAD with anatomical lung

Fig. 2.3 - Printed chamber on test stand

Fig. 2.4 - Active ex-vivo test, porcine lung

02 · EVLP Chamber04

03

Kitchen Scale Redesign.

An industrial design exercise reimagining a kitchen scale through the visual and functional language of an existing brand. We chose Teenage Engineering.

Group project for an industrial design class during my exchange semester at KTH Stockholm. The brief: redesign a kitchen scale inside the visual and functional language of an existing brand. We chose Teenage Engineering, a Swedish design house defined by industrial honesty and precise mechanical detailing, and called the result KS-01 Heavy. After designing in Fusion 360 and visualising in Blender, we built the physical mockup using FDM 3D printing: housing printed at 1:1 scale, then sanded, primed, and finished to read as a real consumer product. The mockup was the most important deliverable, using FDM as the means to produce a tangible, presentable object rather than just a prototyping shortcut.

Fig. 3.1 - KS-01 Heavy in three colour variants, each showing a different menu state. Rendered in Blender.

Fig. 3.2 - Knurled aluminium scroll wheel

Fig. 3.3 - Recessed on/off slider

Fig. 3.4 - The 1:1 FDM-printed mockup of KS-01 Heavy.

03 · Kitchen Scale05

04

Motor Cooling Case.

Consolidating the wheel carrier and motor cooling jacket into a single LPBF part for AMZ Racing, a piece that only exists because metal AM allows it.

A group project for the ETH "Design for AM" lecture in collaboration with AMZ Racing. The goal: combine two traditionally separate parts, the wheel carrier and the motor cooling jacket, into a single load-bearing LPBF component, with coolant channels routed through the structural geometry. The final design uses an internal lattice structure (not visible in the renders) to lightweight the part. My contribution was the FEM stiffness validation in Siemens NX: confirming that the consolidated, lightweighted carrier still met load-path requirements under cornering load cases.

Fig. 4.1 - FEM displacement under cornering load.

Fig. 4.2 - Printed LPBF component, post-process

04 · Motor Cooling Case06

05

Pop-Pop Boat.

A thermodynamic toy as a vehicle for learning the practical constraints of LPBF.

A pop-pop boat is a thermoacoustic toy: it boils a small water charge inside a coil, the steam pushes water out the rear, condensation pulls it back in, and the cycle repeats at the system's natural frequency to produce oscillating thrust.

Group project for the ETH "Design for AM" lecture. The goal was to learn the principles of design for AM by designing the internal coil geometry within LPBF rules: minimum channel diameter, unsupported overhang limits, and build orientation all shaped the final form.

Fig. 5.1 - External CAD. Cone profile chosen for LPBF orientation.

Fig. 5.2 - Internal section. The coil is the entire reason the part exists.

Fig. 5.3 - Printed component. LPBF surface texture without post-processing.

05 · Pop-Pop Boat07

06

Latrine Emptying Device.

A hand-powered, low-cost device for emptying pit latrines in resource-poor settings, a team project where I got my hands dirty across design, fabrication, and field testing.

Group project for the ETH "Product Development & Engineering Design" lecture. The brief: empty pit latrines safely, cheaply, without grid power, using materials that can be sourced and repaired locally. I contributed to the sludge transport mechanism design, the material selection in Ansys Granta, and the hands-on building and testing with the rest of the team.

Fig. 6.1 - Working sketch of the transport mechanism

Fig. 6.2 - Hands-on field testing

Fig. 6.3 - Team at final demonstration

06 · Latrine Device08

07

Robotic Hand.

An early self-initiated FDM project from before university, included to show where my interest in additive manufacturing began.

A fully 3D-printable, servo-driven robotic hand designed in Fusion 360. Tendon-driven fingers, servos in the forearm, nylon cords flexing each segment. Never finished, the electronics were never wired, but it was the project where I first learned that 3D-print tolerances cascade into mechanism performance, and the one that pulled me toward additive manufacturing in the first place.

Robotic hand - CAD render, joint detail, printed prototype

Fig. 7.1 - CAD render with servo bay, joint detail, and assembled printed prototype.

07 · Robotic Hand09

End

Thank you for reading

Let's build
something.

If anything here resonates with what you're doing at On, I would be very glad to talk further.

Dylan Cernadela Pires dylan.prs@hotmail.com MSc · ETH Zürich

Web portfolio on.dylanpires.com

Location Zürich, CH Available to start as discussed

Dylan Pires · Portfolio10

DylanPires.