CUE 2007 Home >> Features >> The "Real World" of Senior Design — Student Projects Benefit Industry Customers

CUE 2007
Mechanical Engineering:
The "Real World" of Senior Design — Student Projects Benefit Industry Customers

Mechanical engineering seniors are working on engineering projects with companies such as ConMed Electrosurgery and Nautilus. Above, students (from left to right) Heather Bartlett, Evan Falivene, Jamie Clark, Tyler Bagrosky, and Audrey Earnshaw are developing a new surgical tool, while students (below, clockwise from lower left) Ryan Gillespie, Chris De Luca, Brent Viar, and Jeff Squire are designing an exercise bicycle.

As a student completing the biomedical engineering option in mechanical engineering, Heather Bartlett wants to work for a medical device company after graduation. This year, she is getting a close-up look at the industry as her senior design team undertakes the challenge of developing a new device to be used in minimally invasive surgery.

The team is designing a 5-mm hand piece for ConMed, Electro-surgery in Centennial, Colorado, which is intended to both cut and cauterize tissue with one tool. The project offers the student team a challenge because it combines two technologies in one very small device.

"Our mentor, Steve Donnigan at ConMed, has been awesome," Bartlett says. "He is very committed to our project, and he is patient with our learning. Our group's goal is to make a contribution that is really beneficial to the company."

Approximately 150 students are enrolled in the one-year senior design course sequence this year. The students are working in teams to complete 30 projects, including 28 that are sponsored by industry or government labs, and two others sponsored by professional societies.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory is sponsoring four design projects related to wind generation at its National Wind Technology Center south of Boulder. These involve such tasks as developing a blade rotation jig for turbine blades approaching 200 feet in length, and designing an acoustic array for measurement of wind turbine noise.

"I've always been interested in engineering design and in renewable energy sources," says Sander Pick, a student who is working on the blade rotation jig. "The opportunity to work on such a large-scale project that will actually be used has been inspiring to our whole team."

While geographical proximity can assist in communications between the student teams and their industry or government mentors, several groups are working with out-of-state companies. These include ACMI, a medical instrument maker in Massachu-setts; Sikorsky, a Connecticut helicopter manufacturer; and ATK, an advanced weapon and space systems company in Utah. Ford Motor Co. in Michigan, Intel in Arizona, and Shell Oil in Houston are also sponsoring projects.

The industry and government-sponsored projects have been solicited through the Industry/University Cooperative Projects Center (I/UCPC), a department initiative launched in 1999 by Jack Zable, industry professor of mechanical engineering design. The center's goal is to foster innovative, technical collaborations in which students deliver tested, functional hardware and documentation to the sponsor at the completion of the project. Sponsors pay a fee of $11,000 for each project and benefit from the students' hard work and fresh ideas, as well as the input of a faculty advisor assigned to each team.

Industry ratings given to the student teams at the completion of each project show a high level of satisfaction with the students' performance.

"They are doing an excellent job," says Andy Lull, cardio engineering manager for Nautilus, a fitness equipment company that is working with a student team to incorporate biomechanical principles into the design of a smarter, more adjustable exercise bicycle. "They've been very proactive about finding the shortcomings of other products out there, and we'll see if they come up with something we want to pursue."

Nautilus sponsored two student projects last year, including one that the company ultimately pursued and one that it didn't. "One proved to be in a direction that we didn't want to go, but that was helpful too," Lull says.

Meanwhile, students benefit from the experience of working with a company on an actual engineering project.

"Students have to learn to deal with open-ended questions, and they have to work with real-world schedules and problems," says instructor and I/UCPC associate director Gary Pawlas, who helps Zable to coordinate the projects. "It's really the start of lifelong learning because there's always going to be something you don't know and you have to figure out."

Department website: http://me-www.colorado.edu
I/UCPC website: http://me-www.colorado.edu/MEDept/Industry/project_ctr.htm