Bio

I'm Svavar Konráðsson.

I have a BSc in Mechanical Engineering. The only thing I have left in my Master's degree is the thesis. I'm working on it now.

Here's a video where I tell Neil Gershenfeld a little bit about myself during random review.

Team Spark

I took part in starting Team Spark, the Icelandic Formula Student team, which designs and fabricates electric racing cars and competes against other university teams at Silverstone circuit in England every year.

TS11

We got the help of Rafnar employees to make the composite shell of the TS11, our first racing car. The big protrusions on the sides are battery boxes. Because of time constraints, the steel spaceframe was simply covered with plastic sheets and then we draped fiberglass fabric over them and painted them with resin. And then Snorri offered me a job at Rafnar!

Our first time at Silverstone Circuit. The car didn't drive, but we learned a lot!

TS12

This model worked!

Building the spaceframe of TS12, our second car (and the first one where we had some idea of what we were doing). Lots and lots of tube cutting and positioning. Ívar (in the middle) designed the square tube jig that positions the main members for welding. We got help from Teknís to fabricate it.

I'm near the middle, in a teal shirt. We worked with three students from the Icelandic Academy of the Arts, who came up with the name Team Spark, made the logo and chose the team and car colors and designed and made this amazing composite shell which was inspired by the electric eel. This is the unveiling at their graduation exhibition. They even embroidered the logo into the headrest, can you see it?

Team Spark at Silverstone circuit with TS12. I'm in the middle.

I took TS12 for a spin on a go-kart track. My first time driving an electric car!

Rafnar boatyard

Dröfn

My first task at Rafnar was to finish the design of this 6m pleasure boat.

Leiftur

I did the structural design and Lloyd's Register certification of an innovative RIB at Rafnar boatyard, a boat that is now manufactured in five countries around the world.

Pilot house simulation of Leiftur, the most popular Rafnar boat. The first unit, in grey, went to the Icelandic Coast Guard. You really have to take this thing for a spin to see how unique it is.

My desk at Rafnar boatyard. The first orange Leiftur being delivered to an Icelandic search and rescue team. Its weight distribution was spot on!

Jökla

Jökla the 15m yacht. I'm casually laying my hand on the boat as though it's my baby, but I had almost no part in its design.

One of the double-curved windows in Jökla broke during construction and the CAD model had also broken, so I got the help of our purchasing manager to measure it very precisely, model it and order a new one. It took ten weeks, cost a million ISK and arrived from Germany perfect, except it was bent the wrong way.

I had accidentally set the document to the American orthographic projection standard instead of the European one! I then changed the setting to First angle projection and ordered another glass pane and they let me keep my job. And the yacht turned out beautiful, but this was most of my contribution to it. Drawing standards are important for getting the build right!

KOL Carbon

A coworker came to me with an idea for a luxury belt and I helped him take it all the way:

I designed this compression molded carbon fiber belt buckle. It's an unnecessarily high-performance material, but I like how the fibers catch the light. This design was a good exercise in double-curved modeling.

Yours truly modeling the belt.

Version 2 of the compression mold, very much simplified and improved. Nice and shiny! The first mold included the hole for the belt, which made the geometry complicated and full of sharp edges which made it tricky to put the SMC material into the mold. With V2 the hole was milled afterwards.

Skenkir

This is my favorite university class project:

Building Skenkir the robot with Guðjón Bergmann for a university course. The robot's only purpose in life is to lift a wine glass and give the professor a sip. Skenkir means 'someone who decants' in Icelandic.

Because I'm Gyro Gearloose's biggest fan, the robot had to have an actuated hand.

Fab Lab Ísafjörður

Now I work at Fab Lab Ísafjörður and I'm interested in ways to introduce students to computer-controlled machines.

Myself on the left and Þórarinn Bjartur Breiðfjörð Gunnarsson, my Fab Academy instructor and the director of Fab Lab Ísafjörður, on the right.

I like to think of myself as an inventor. I realize that in many people's minds the word "inventor" is almost synonymous with "crackpot", but as a child I thought Gyro Gearloose was the coolest character and I always wanted a shed full of tools and inventions like he has. Now I work in a Fab Lab! I've even referred to myself as an inventor in public:

Interview in Icelandic about my work and studies

I agree with mixtela's thoughts on being an inventor. For me it's like being a writer. You don't have to be a successful published writer to call yourself a writer. You just sit down and write.

You can decide to be an inventor. You don't need to have invented a world-changing device, all you need is to make things that you haven't seen before.

Note

I still need to add more details to the bio. I need to figure out the way to copy text documents from my father's antiquated Tandy 102 portable computer, on which I wrote more text about myself.