I suppose I ought to introduce myself here.
My name is Ismail Hozain. I’m a mechatronics engineering student at Texas A&M and the founder of the local makerspace in Bryan-College Station, Tx. Presently, I find myself spending my time working on school, keeping the lights on at the makerspace, and doing engineering contract work in my free time. Over the years I’ve worked on a wide variety of projects, including but not limited to:
Building a 1500lbf kerosene and liquid oxygen engine + test stand.
A bespoke CNC machine that removes ASIC chips.
A highly modified Cybertruck ( Exterior mods design + fab + wrap)
The longer story is as follows. I grew up really enjoying building, tinkering and repairing things. Had quite a knack for it. Then I started programming in middle school, learned web development, cybersecurity, and started messing around with robots. In high school, I then competed and placed nationally in various TSA engineering competitions, and spent a great deal of time honing my fabrication, electronics, woodworking and prototyping skills. Within 2 years at high school I was helping manage our robotics lab, running prints, lasers etc. Then right before COVID me and some friends decided that the best use of our time was to build a 16 ft tall liquid fueled rocket. So I learned a great deal about that. I wound up designing our feed system, flight tanks, many engine components, the aerostructure, had parts machined, and fabricated, wrote flight sims, and designed and built our test stand with the help of some truly wonderful mentors. This process took about 2 years and was foundational to my experience as an engineer. I learned how to lead a team through some very very tough circumstances and came out of the project with a very wide background in propulsion engineering. Some of the most valuable learnings were lessons I learned from my terrible engineering and project management decisions. But it taught me to never make those mistakes ever again.
I then graduated high school and went to Texas A&M to study engineering. I had at this time not finished building the test stand and found zero support on campus for it, so I rented a storage unit and worked there for two months. Then I recruited a new team to help me finish building the stand and run the hotfire campaign. Three months into freshman year, the stand was done and ready for testing operations. I wrote an update on my blog and published it detailing our work. I suggested opening a makerspace if given the funds and within two days we had them. I noticed that I wasn’t alone in wanting a space and there was likely enough demand to support one. It turns out indeed I was correct.
I spoke to Michael and Matthew and convinced them to join me in this. We then signed our first large customer Aggies Create, which gave us the confidence to sign a commercial lease. We then spent the first year in the negative, with continued bankrupcy scares until finally in the spring of 2024 we finally broke even and started finally making money. And ever since, it’s been going well. We recruited some truly legendary staff and they are our greatest asset. So far we’re up to 10 staff and they represent the most dedicated, awesome and talented students we’ve met during our time in school.
Our first building was slated for demolition since the moment we moved in. This was fine, we knew this and preferred a short lease in case we went belly up. Then we spent a few months looking for a new building, and were able to secure our second location in August 2024. Then we spent 3 weeks renovating it, removing the flooring and putting in a grind-n-seal concrete finish which was if I may - an absolute back breaking experience.
But we eventually moved in. Move in day was actually rather insane, it was 4 hours, 4 trucks + trailers + a flat bed tow truck, over 50 people helping load and unload everything.
It was honestly shocking.
Anyways, then we knocked down some more walls, built a new room, and spent a great deal of time building things in the new space. It’s great!
Latest video here: https://youtu.be/Qe8WCPXFOXs
(the wall in the thumbnail no longer exists and the garage door is installed)
We have everything from go-karts, racecars, all the way down to wood cutting boards, embedded system projects, and small peltier modules.
I could go into more detail, I did just skim over years and years of learnings, but generally, that’s the gist. This post is mostly so you know who I am and why I am (or am not) worth attention.
Where to next? No clue. Ask me again in a month.
Ismail - 3-9-25
PS. I’ve built a lot of stuff. So here’s a google photos album. Enjoy!