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Mechanical engineering seniors present design projects
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| Senior mechanical engineering students (from left) Michael Washko, Patrice Hughes, Kenneth Cardillo and Benjamin Raab discuss the presentation they will make explaining the child-resistant dispensing closures they designed for Polyseal/Berry Plastics. |
11:42 a.m., Dec. 22, 2003--UD mechanical engineering (ME) seniors mingled with clients as they waited to make their senior design project presentations at Clayton Hall, Friday, Dec. 12.
Faculty advisers Dick J. Wilkins, Michael Keefe and James L. Glancy conferred with their teams, giving them last minute advice as they prepared their presentations.
Their clients, officials with Dade Behring, the DuPont Co., W.L. Gore, Daimler Chrysler and others, were there to watch students demonstrate devices their companies had requested that might save them money, speed up production or improve their products.
Senior design projects are real-life solutions to business and industry problems that require that graduating mechanical engineering students have learned design and engineering practice, realistic industrial management structure and professionalism in project activities.
Student projects start with meetings with clients to determine their needs. Then, the teams identify the best practices for the desired function, generate design concepts and work with clients to select the best concept.
An essential feature of the course is transforming the design into hardware, according to Wilkins. It involves building and testing prototypes, improving designs and satisfying the customer. There is a possibility the device will be manufactured and used by the client if successful.
This year students worked on projects for the following companies:
- Air Products and Chemicals Inc.—for a boiler blow-down system that would be cost-effective while bringing the company into compliance with state regulations;
- Dade Behring—for developing state of the art circuit board inspection processes and measuring equipment;
- Daimler Chrysler Newark—for a car transport upgrade to increase the life of the carriers that run Dodge Durangos through a phosphate/E-coat system;
DuPont Engineering—for a tachometer calibration system for automating the inspection of the paste coating of electrodes on ceramic circuit boards;
- W.L. Gore—for a system that incorporates a Gore-Tex membrane filter for the cooling of outdoor telecommunication base stations;
- ILC Dover—for a low-cost functional glove that will sense key finger, thumb and wrist positions using compliant advanced technologies;
- Northrop Grumman—for a tile insertion tool to insert and extract modules that are assembled in a tile format;
- Polyseal/Berry Plastics—for a one-piece dispensing closure that it is difficult for a child to open yet simple enough that a senior adult would have no difficulty;
- Precision Air Convey—for a self-contained unit that accepts small rolls of film that will automatically be stripped from the core via a guillotine knife; and
- Terumo Medical—for improving the washing operations in tubing used for specialty sheaths making it more efficient and operator friendly.
Article by Barbara Garrison
Photo by Kathy Atkinson
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