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Two teams tie for senior ME design honor
11:08 a.m., Dec. 22, 2006--Two teams of four senior mechanical engineering majors tied to win top honors at their senior design presentations on Monday, Dec. 11. The teams, which were selected from a pool of 16, will present their projects on an improved fastener tensile test system and a more efficient tablet feeder during the 56th annual Engineers Week celebration at UD in February. The presentations are the results of a required capstone engineering practice course, in which student teams develop real engineering system designs based on specific customer requirements, develop engineering specifications and generate concepts that they can justify. The teams then design, fabricate, assemble, test and improve an actual prototype. Under the supervision of faculty advisers, the projects are sponsored by businesses or government agencies, which work closely with the student teams throughout the process. Nick Depompeo, Brian Hufe, Mike Sacra and Ben Stuchlik were picked for their design of a fastener tensile test system, sponsored by Southco Inc., which manufactures a variety of specially fasteners, latches, hinges and other components for the computer, electronics, automotive, industrial, military, aerospace and recreational vehicle markets. The project was to design an improved method for testing several styles of “quarter turn” captive fasteners used in military and aerospace applications with the aim of reducing labor and material cost, as well as the time required to conduct product testing. Craig Livingston, Andrew Snodgrass, Jordan Weinstein and Aaron Winn, tied for the top honors with their design of an improved tablet feeder for Dade Behring Holdings Inc., the world's largest company dedicated solely to clinical diagnostics with 2005 revenues of over $1.7 billion. The goal of the project was to reduce the cycle time of a tablet feeder on production line, significantly lowering operating cost and capital spending. “Since we don't have a way for the students to practice what they learn, this is the closest that we can get to the real world,” Dick Wilkins, professor of mechanical engineering and one of the advisers, said. “By having the projects sponsored by industries, they get the feeling of a factory process.” During the program, 69 students in teams of four and five made presentations on a variety of concepts, from a metered-flow regulator to a bottle-closure sealing system and a blood-oxygenator test station. The teams explained their concepts using charts, graphs, slide presentations and, in some cases, working models of the prototype. Four judges--engineering professionals Peter Popper, a retired mechanical engineer; Glen Simmonds, a reliability engineer at DuPont; Peter Cloud, '64 ME, a retired mechanical engineer; and Ajay Prasad, UD professor of mechanical engineering--awarded points for different aspects of the presentation, including communication, and also asked follow-up questions. Nate Cloud, '64 EG, the project sponsor coordinator, said the benefits for a sponsor of a senior design project are that the sponsor gets results through projects that they specify based on actual needs. “They find value in a solution to their problem,” Cloud said. “If they are interested in hiring, they get a chance to have their companies' names in front of the whole class and get to know the team members. Some [sponsors] treat it as a recruiting opportunity, and many of the team members go on to work for the sponsors.” Article by Martin Mbugua |
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