MAX BELLOTTIMAX BELLOTTI

01 — Formula SAE

Suspension Manufacturing

Global Formula Racing runs a joint programme between DHBW Ravensburg and Oregon State University. I produce outboard suspension hardware in aluminium and steel — machined to the suspension group's drawings and checked against print before release to assembly.

Tie rods, uprights and clevises, cut on manual machines and inspected against the print rather than trusted to a CAM toolpath.

On the design side I modelled a retaining plate in Siemens NX that ties the accumulator to the chassis geometry, validated it with 3D-printed prototypes before committing to metal, and produced the ASME Y14.5 drawings used in the suspension outboard cost report.

In 2026 the car took the overall win at Formula SAE Michigan. I travelled with the team and worked the event — tech inspection, paddock turnaround and grid.

02 — Fabrication

Machine Shop

I am qualified on the lathe, mill and power tools through the OSU College of Engineering Innovation Labs. Most of the hardware in this portfolio was cut on manual machines, working from a print with a DRO, edge finder and dial indicator rather than a CAM toolpath.

Every qualification below required cutting a part to print and having it measured and signed off by an instructor before the machine was released to me.

03 — Drafting

CAD & Technical Drawings

Drawings are the deliverable that lets somebody else make the part. I work in Siemens NX and produce fully dimensioned detail drawings with section and detail views, thread callouts and assembly BOMs.

04 — Precision Manufacturing

Product Design in NX

Bellotti's Precision Manufacturing is my own venture: a machined hex aluminium case that holds a glass decant vial, with a twist mechanism that raises the vial and a self-indexing cap.

Every part was modelled in Siemens NX from a skeleton sketch, so the body, vial holder and cap all update together when a dimension changes.

The case went through printed iterations before any metal was cut. Each revision was printed, fitted against a real decant vial and a real bottle, then corrected in CAD.

05 — Industry

Navier: Electric Hydrofoil

Navier builds the N30, a 30 ft electric hydrofoiling boat. Over two summers I worked on the development vessel: temperature and flow rig testing for the HVAC system, inventory and part flow through MRPeasy, and on-the-water troubleshooting of the lift-lock foiling system.

Alongside the rig testing I did CAD and fabrication work around the boat, and spent time on the water with it.

I also ran a cost–benefit analysis in Excel for scaling operations to international markets, and engineered a plywood-constructed cart capable of loads up to 200 lbs.

06 — Research

Wirz Aerospace Lab

In the Wirz Aerospace Lab I support simulation of Hall effect ion thrusters. My role is to take the physical plasma and vacuum chambers on campus, turn them into clean CAD, and prepare that geometry so it can be imported into COMSOL Multiphysics without breaking the mesh.

Imported STEP geometry is rarely simulation-ready. Each chamber is measured, checked for sealed cavities and mating references, then the interior plasma volume is extracted as its own solid so COMSOL has a fluid domain to solve in.

Not all of the lab work is simulation. Chambers need structure to sit in and parts that wear out need replacing, and both jobs start with measuring what is already there.

07 — Maintenance

AMC-8270 Pinsetters

For a year I maintained the AMC-8270 pinsetters at the Oregon State Memorial Union. A pinsetter is a linkage problem in constant motion: a sweep bar, a spotting table on springs, ten independent pin grippers and a ball lift, all cycling every few seconds with customers waiting on the lane.

Most faults were mechanical rather than electrical — a stretched belt, a worn link, a gripper out of adjustment. Learning to watch the machine cycle and identify which linkage was late is the same skill as reading a mechanism in CAD, only faster and louder.

09 — Software

The Forsaken Path

A dungeon-crawler ARPG built for Roblox in Luau — and the place I work out systems thinking away from metal. It is architected the way a test rig is: trust boundaries drawn first, state made reproducible, and every balance decision checked against an offline simulation before it ships.