# Joseph Oprea

> Engineering student in North Georgia who builds machines, software, and the automation that ties them together. Production engineer at a cabinet manufacturer (CNC programming, Cabinet Vision, S2M Center, nesting). Wants to meet people who build real things: founders, engineers, and advisors in hard tech. Long term, he wants to build his own company.

This file is a plain-text version of the portfolio site for AI agents and crawlers. Everything here is also on the main page (/). Last updated 2026-10-08.

## Contact

- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephoprea): fastest way to reach Joseph
- [GitHub](https://github.com/jothepro43)
- [Project archive on Instagram, @oprea.build](https://www.instagram.com/oprea.build/)
- [opreabros.com](https://opreabros.com): website studio Joseph runs with his brother

Open to: building something together (hardware, automation, or software), roles, research, and programs where he builds alongside good people, and talking shop about printers, CNC, and automation.

## Builds

Each build is a numbered part with a status.

- **JO-01 PortaVax** (2023, built): team-built buggy for moving vaccines in sub-Saharan Africa, priced 50% under competitors. Georgia Governor's Honors Program, Engineering; 650 finalists statewide.
- **JO-02 Printed to Perfection** (2024 to 2025, closed): founded and ran an 80+ member community teaching people to run profitable 3D printing businesses. Weekly strategy calls on Skool.
- **JO-03 Door Order Validator** (2025 to now, in production): desktop tool the cabinet shop uses daily to catch supplier order errors before they hit the CNC. Python, vanilla JS UI in a WebView, ships as a Windows app. Checks dimensions, quantities, and piece counts. Version 1.16. Internal tool.
- **JO-04 [rcflorax.com](https://rcflorax.com)** (2026, live): custom Shopify theme for a Lexus car Instagram account with over 100,000 followers, fully editable by the owner. Shopify, Liquid, Skeleton theme base, release v0.18.5.
- **JO-05 Core R-Theta 4-axis printer** (2025 to 2026, active): NASA Space Grant research build of a 4-axis printer. Non-planar printing achieved. Open source.
  - Axes: 4 (linear X, rotating theta, Z, nozzle tilt B). Kinematics: Core R-Theta. Controller: Duet 3 Mini 5+, RepRapFirmware. Motors: 4x NEMA 17, GT2 belts. Frame: PETG. Slicer: S5, Jacob Navarrete's modified slicer.
  - Open-source build of Joshua Bird's Core R-Theta design. Team: Joseph Oprea (mechanical redesign, Fusion 360 CAD, BOM, assembly), Jacob Navarrete (firmware configuration, slicer integration), John Cheng. Faculty advisor: Dr. Ted Forringer. Supported by the University of North Georgia and the NASA Space Grant Consortium.
  - Featured by UNG News, December 2025. Joseph's quote: "In research, you deal with practical problems people face."
  - The site shows renders of the real CAD replaying real S5 G-code (a non-planar pi print, nozzle tilt from -55 to +18 degrees), a scroll-to-print section, a nozzle-cam view, and a layer-by-layer viewer of all 205 curved layers.
  - Links: [GitHub repo](https://github.com/jothepro43/Core-R-Theta-4-Axis-Printer), [UNG News article](https://ung.edu/news/articles/2025/12/stems-scholars-share-research-on-campus.php), [full CAD in Autodesk Fusion](https://gmail1090728.autodesk360.com/shares/public/SH30dd5QT870c25f12fc8db3dca985dc306e?mode=embed).
- **JO-06 [opreabros.com](https://opreabros.com)** (2026, live): hand-coded studio site, no framework, scroll-driven motion. HTML, CSS, vanilla JS on Cloudflare Workers, zero dependencies.
- **JO-07 UNG Mesh** (2026, funding in progress): offline LoRa mesh network as a backup communications layer between UNG campuses, starting with Gainesville and Dahlonega. Why: the November 2025 Cloudflare outage, the January 2026 Verizon outage, and the early 2026 Georgia winter storms showed how fragile centralized networks are. Role: co-author, undergraduate researcher, Engineering Student Guild research initiative. Developed with input from experienced Meshtastic operators. Technical specifications are not public while funding is pending.
- **JO-08 Next build** (2027, restricted): not yet public.

Also on the bench:

- Automated Prusa MK3S+: 3DQue system and software for auto-eject and print queue management, watched by a self-hosted Obico server for AI failure detection
- Self-hosted game server stack: Proxmox, Docker, custom Python control panel
- Prediction-market data tools: Kalshi research, Polymarket MCP server
- TI-Nspire Lua formula library
- LiftMate CAD

## Background

- Production engineering at a cabinet manufacturer: CNC programming, Cabinet Vision, S2M Center, and nesting. Started there as a CNC operator.
- 3D printing and designing in Fusion 360 since 8th grade. Loves automating things, especially in industrial settings.
- Co-founded a small website studio with his brother (opreabros.com). Uses AI tools every day to build faster.
- Languages: English, Romanian.

Timeline:

- 2023: Georgia Governor's Honors Program, Engineering
- 2024 to December 2026: University of North Georgia, Associate of Science. Co-Vice President, Engineering Student Guild. Taught guild members Fusion 360.
- Spring 2027: University of Georgia, Mechanical Engineering (transfer)

Tools: Fusion 360, Cabinet Vision, S2M Center, AlphaCAM, Python, JavaScript, Liquid, Docker, Proxmox, Cloudflare.