Building a Reputation

Matias Biraben (’16)

At age three, Matias Biraben (’16) was allured by the gears of an alarm clock. He spent hours meticulously taking the pieces apart and reassembling the clock. A few years later, when his older sister received a bicycle for her birthday, Biraben spent the day examining the mechanics of the bike. And after childhood phases of building crossbows and kites, Biraben began to experiment with more complicated pieces.

Biraben has walked into the world of hands-on building, creating everything from bikes to sail boats and chairs to coffee tables in his free time. Without any formal instruction, Biraben is a self-taught innovator.

“I like working with mechanical things that I can visually understand,” Biraben said. “Recently I’ve been working on making a motorized bicycle, restoring an old classic Italian road bike and a 16-foot sailboat from scratch.”

After getting a mental image of what he imagines the final result to be, Biraben begins to work.

“Nothing is really set in stone, so if I get a cool idea while I’m working with something, I can incorporate it without having to violate some sort of restricted plan I’ve created for myself,” Biraben said.

Biraben is currently building a catamaran-style sailboat. The boat is equipped with two hulls, which are the pieces that retain air in order to keep the boat afloat, and he expects the boat to be 16 feet long.

Though he realizes that he won’t be able to sail it very often, Biraben has another vehicle — a motorized bicycle — that will be fully operational.

The builder began with a motorized mountain bike with an 80 cc engine, then added various components that align the chain and the sprocket. He finished building the bike, but a few technical difficulties have pushed back the bike’s completion.

Biraben gets his materials for his projects from hardware, bike and online stores. Much of his inspiration stems from websites, books or things he sees around Los Angeles.

“Usually I get an idea, I might draw a few sketches, but usually nothing too intricate unless the project itself is really intricate, like the sailboat, in which case I make a more elaborate plan and design, but even then there are a lot of details you can just figure out as you go,” Biraben said.

Nick Charchut (’15)

Many kids recall unwrapping a LEGO set as a birthday gift and spending weeks constructing the elaborate house or car perfectly depicted in the instructions. By high school, however, teenagers usually set aside the blocks and pick up other hobbies. For Nick Charchut (’15), the building blocks of his childhood have built the foundation for recent creations — drones and a pipe instrument.

During the end of his sophomore year, Charchut learned that current Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student Alex Huang (’13) was building drones, and became instantly intrigued to do the same. Since his mom works for a visual effects studio, Charchut knew of AutoCAD, a computer designing software. He learned to use technology to design his first project, a tricopter.

“It’s hard to brainstorm because you have to use the software to manipulate lengths, curvature, volume [and] edges until your product is as you imagined it,” Charchut said.

He designed the drone centers to look like a peace sign, and the three arms of the drone span 40 centimeters long, spaced with 120 degrees between each one. The arms have been made from balsa wood and hollow square tubes of carbon fiber.

Thus far, Charchut has flown the drones at Marine Park. The main purpose of the drones, however, is for aerial photography, something he plans to continue when he fixes the tricopter he has built.

“[The drones could give] birds-eye views of the campus from a mounted GoPro, and any music played for anyone on the pipe instrument are just two possibilities,” Charchut said.

After recently being admitted as a student to MIT, Charchut said building was helpful during the application process. MIT has a large building culture with various building clubs, including the MIT Electronics Research Society, also known as MITERS. Current MIT student Alex Huang has even created a MakerSpace, a room with 3D printers and CNC machines — a device that cuts a pattern out of a flat material designed on the computer — in the basement of his dorm room. Charchut hopes to further his building while attending the school in the fall.

“I’m not sure if I’ll make a jump to programming and the virtual world, but my ‘maker’ hobby has definitely made me determined to be an engineer,” Charchut said. “Even if user error prompts a crash [in a drone], it is always good to try to make your project better. I’ll be prototyping until it reaches perfection and that will take awhile.”