Digital Commons Network^™

Sliding Crane For Mobile Scissor Lift Table, Phuc Ba Chau

All Undergraduate Projects

The purpose of this report is to build a device that can be installed to the hydraulic lifting cart to help students work easily on the CNC machine. The main point of the proposal is to design a device that can carry, load, and unload the Kurt vise, which weighs over 80 lb., to the CNC machine table and to the storage area within fifteen minutes during lab time. The methodology of the report focuses on the safety and easy performance for students working in the machine shop. Safety is the main concern in the design of this project, because …

Central Washington University C-Clamp Matchplate, Ryan Thomas Berghoff

All Undergraduate Projects

The goal was to design and manufacture a matchplate to be used by the Central Washington University (CWU) Engineering Department to cast C-clamps. These castings are produced in the University’s foundry and would be prepared as a secondary project for the department’s basic machining course. The design produced allows the C-clamps to be molded in a single pour for a full class of students, which is approximately sixteen (16). The desire was to achieve a design that was functional, yet allowed room and/or means to be easily modified or repaired, if needed. This was achieved through designing the C-clamps in …

Select Adjustable Trigger System, Seth Rich

All Undergraduate Projects

There is an increasing need for singular weapon systems to fill multiple roles. A fire control group system is needed which provides a trigger that is adaptable for different uses on command by way of the safety selector. The device needs to be non-intrusive to normal function and operation of the firearm requiring no specialized training in its use. It should provide with a setting for a general combat use and a secondary setting for a designated marksman role. The proposed system interfaces with existing trigger groups by using a self-contained drop in module that counteracts the primary trigger spring …

Tensile Specimen Punch, John Allen

All Undergraduate Projects

This project comes from a need to have tensile specimens made for the MET 351, Metallurgy/Materials and Processes, and 426, Applied Strengths of Materials, labs. This punch is designed to be used with an arbor press to create the desired tensile specimen shape out of plastic blanks. The initial concept was suggested by Dr. Craig Johnson. The designs went through many changes, for example getting rid of the sides originally proposed to hold the specimen in place, and modifications to other parts to make them more efficient. Additional parts were also added to the design with the help and advice …

Adjustable Shelving Unit For Home Beer Brewing, Andrew L. Kastning

All Undergraduate Projects

The purpose of this report is to show the design, build, and test process for a portable beer brewing rack. The rack is designed to be compact, yet still be able to hold all of the necessary components for brewing: two 15-gallon insulated kettles, two gas burners, and an instant hot water heating system. These components can be supported in any configuration at multiple height intervals on the center tree during the brewing process. The rack is designed to be resistant to tipping over when brewing while requiring less than two square feet of floor space when stored. This report …

Asme Design Challenge: Penathlon Robot, Roxann Roque

All Undergraduate Projects

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) 2017 Design Challenge is modeled after the 2016 Rio Olympics. Participants must build a robot to compete in Olympic style events. These Olympic events include a 10 meter sprint, golf ball hit, tennis ball throw, weight lift and stair climb. The sprint and stair climb event success is measured by time elapsed to complete the event. The weight lift is measured in weight lifted multiplied by height lifted, Newton-meters. The golf ball hit and tennis ball throw are evaluated by distance from robot. A robot was designed to meet this criteria. Analysis methods …

Built-In Bicycle Rack For Cars, Scott A. Hansberry

All Undergraduate Projects

Transporting a bicycle after riding somewhere and then needing to be pickup can be problematic. Bicycles will not fit in most vehicles without removing components. There is also the risk of damaging the inside of the vehicle. Expecting everyone to have a bike rack for their vehicle is unrealistic because the bike rack could be considered unappealing visually, take up to much space in the trunk, or limit the vehicle owner’s access to the trunk. The solution to this problem is a bike rack that mounts onto your car and then mounts your bike onto the rack. Most people don’t …

Pin Router Duplicator, Daniel Phan

All Undergraduate Projects

The purpose of this project is to develop a pin router duplicator to accurately produce guitar bodies, necks, and fret boards. The pin router duplicator is designed to speed up the production process for the class Lean Manufacturing (MET 345), offered at Central Washington University. In the class, students learn how to work as a team to improve the way a woodshop is ran. In Lean Manufacturing, guitar bodies, necks, and fret boards are produced by using a CNC router. For this project, the motivation is to increase production by reducing production time. Accuracy and repeatability is also taken into …

'94 F-150 Running Boards, Justin Wies

All Undergraduate Projects

The project manager owns a 1994 F-150 which was purchased last August. Soon after purchasing, it was determined that it was too high for passengers to get into the truck without complaining. So this project started out being all about fixing that problem. A device was needed that allowed access to the truck without complaining. The plan was to build a device that allows access to the truck while still being light enough to not affect the trucks performance. The devices that were designed are running boards built specifically for this truck. The device had to mount underneath the edge …

Adjustable Height Table Chassis, Trevor Watkins

All Undergraduate Projects

Having the ability to change a dining table between a sitting and standing position is a niche feature. This feature was created for people that play board games regularly at a table, or for people who require use of a dining table as a standing work area. The mechanism that the table works by is using an acme threaded rod as a lead screw, with two timing belt pullies driving the shafts up and down which cause the raising and lowering of the table. These pullies were machined to incorporate an ACME threaded bolt which was welded into each pully. …

Re-Design To E-Nable, Sydnee Johnson

All Undergraduate Projects

A senior in the Mechanical Engineering Technology Department at Central Washington University made it her goal to have her culminating project be something that benefits people in need. Having a fascination in prosthetics, it became the main focus of her project. As children suffer the most in technological advancement of medical devices, the focus group of the project became young girls between the ages 9 and 14.

E-NABLE is a non-profit organization that is a leader in helping young children get access to body-powered prosthetics for relatively cheap. Some of the designs were made for simplicity in functionality, thus the …

Weather Balloon Payload Box, Shellbie Liberty

All Undergraduate Projects

A payload box holding a self-rotating camera was constructed to go on a weather balloon that will document the upcoming solar eclipse on August 21, 2017. A group of physics students, and the paper’s author, are working under Dr. Darci Snowden on the CWU Near Space Observation Team for research dedicated to the eclipse in Oregon. Various projects, including the payload box, are being designed to go up on a high altitude weather balloon. The payload box was designed and constructed to withstand the impact force of falling from 120,000 ft. This was done so the box could be reusable …

Solar Tracker, Carson Man

All Undergraduate Projects

During the senior year in Mechanical Engineering Technology program, a solar tracker was designed and manufactured to be used during Mechanical Engineering Technology labs. The solar tracker will be able to rotate 15 degrees per hour by keeping it in line with changing position of the sun as the sky daily. The solar tracker was designed by calculating the need of the motor speed, allowable load, estimated solar input, and desired efficiency. Also it must be able to withstand the elements of nature, most effects are from the sun(heat), rain(water) and wind(air). Most of the concern will be the effect …

Hands Free Electric Bicycle Stand, Stefan Schacht

All Undergraduate Projects

The growth of electric bicycles has spread to the US, and more bicycle shops are carrying electric assist bicycles. Most bicycle shops are currently ill equipped to accommodate heavier electric bicycles with traditional repair stands, that require at least one had to operate, and the other hand to hold up the bicycle. The problem being solved is the awkward and poor ergonomics of holding up a heavy electric bicycle with one hand, and operating a repair stand with the other. The solution is to use a repair stand that does not require hands to operate. Having a hands-free clamping device …

High Accessibility Cabinet Insert, Matthew Leal

All Undergraduate Projects

Watching grandparents and parents get older, the struggle of day-to-day activities generally increases. One of the most recurring issues the older generation experiences nearly daily is their inability to reach dishes, glassware, and other things on the topmost shelves of a kitchen. Not only is it difficult for them to use things such as stepstools, it also becomes increasingly dangerous. With age, a fall from any height could be catastrophic. With this scenario in mind, a user-friendly cabinet insert would be a very effective way to combat this issue. However, many existing models of cabinet designed to fit these requirements …

Instant Hot Water Heater, Hunter Arnold

All Undergraduate Projects

One of the first steps in the beer brewing process is to heat water to a specific temperature before it is mixed with the malt. The purpose of this project was to make a more compact and efficient heating device for the beer brewing process. The output temperature must be between 170⁰F and 180⁰F. The minimum flow rate should be half a gallon per minute with the maximum flow rate of three gallons per minute. The device will also need to mount to a collapsible beer rack being designed by Andrew Kastning. The device will be primarily compromised of two …

H.F. Hauff Outrigger: Vertical Arm, Juan Tovar

All Undergraduate Projects

H.F. Hauff is a company based out of Yakima which specializes in farming equipment. One of their products is a trailer which has a wind machine attached to it. In order to keep the fan’s thrust from tipping the trailer over, the trailer needs outriggers to extend out. The outriggers also serve as a way to level out the trailer in uneven surfaces. The outriggers are what needed to be designed. This portion of the project was the vertical arm which extends from the horizontal arm, and goes towards the ground to raise the trailer. The project consisted of three …

Asme Rc Baja Car: Suspension And Chassis, C. Aidan Pringle

All Undergraduate Projects

Each year the regional chapter of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) put on a Radio Controlled (R/C) Baja car competition. The R/C car designed for the competition must compete in two events, a slalom sprint and an obstacle course. A successfully designed car will not only be able to complete each event but also be competitive in each event. A main component to the success of the R/C car is the suspension. The suspension design for this year’s car must operate effectively without interfering with the steering and drivetrain designed by Walter Lackey. The suspension utilizes a transverse …

Composite Cold Expansion Tooling, Andrew Amos

All Undergraduate Projects

In the world of aircraft manufacturing, cold expansion products literally hold these aircraft together. The problem faced today is that the Little Brute Hydraulic Puller designed and built by Fatigue Technology Inc. is a handheld steel hydraulic cylinder that is heavy and expensive to produce. In a market that demands continuous improvement, there is a constant push to make the product cheaper, better and lighter. In order to accomplish this demand a composite tube will be substituted in the design as the primary pressure cylinder instead of the traditional steel pressure cylinder in order to create a lighter and cheaper …

Beer Rack On Demand Water Heater, Jason Warenski

All Undergraduate Projects

On-Demand Water Heater (for homebrewing systems)

By Jason Warenski (Engineering Technologies)

The on-demand water heater is being built for a home brewing system. The is intended to improve brewing process efficiency while reducing the footprint of the brewing equipment. The device contains a coil made from 3/8” soft copper tubing. The coil is inserted into a housing which is constructed of two 22-gauge stainless steel cylinders and a layer of ceramic insulation. Attached to the inlet and outlet of the coil are monitoring and control devices. On the inlet is a water flow meter which allows the user to monitor …

Directional Rope Capture Device, Seaver Philipp

All Undergraduate Projects

The current market for rope capture devices shows a trend of using toothed devices as the method of creating a rope capture system. These systems are effective for a variety of applications but in any scenario in which a high load is encountered there is a large amount of damage done by the teeth to the rope. The objective of this project was to create a rope capture device that did not utilize teeth in order to create a safer loading condition on the rope. The method used for this project was application of equiangular spirals, this is the same …

Portable Snow-Bike, Tiago Sousa

All Undergraduate Projects

The world of extreme sports and more specifically the world of snow sports is changing by the minute. At the forefront of these new changes is the snow bike. The bike allows you to ride the mountain like you were riding a mountain-bike on skies, but it comes with challenges. The biggest of them being portability. The bike is restricted to certain types of lifts within the mountain and that restricts the user of its potential. This report will show that it is possible to “fold” both the frame and the handlebars to make the bike portable and therefore opening …

Development Of An Excel® Rocket Simulator For Application In Middle School, High-School, And University Stem Education, Melvin Lee Hortman

All Master's Theses

Water rocket activities are one of the most popular STEM activities used in primary, secondary, and higher education yet are void of engineering, though engineering is heavily implied in the STEM acronym. This study investigated the amount of engineering present in water rocket activities, and options for emphasizing engineering more in water rocket activities using an open-platform flight simulator for use by educators to enable students to predict flight parameters of a water rocket they designed, and test those predictions against experimental data. The simulator was constructed in Excel® with many functions, but the function validated in this study was …

Stationary Bike Generator System, Rakan Alghamdi

All Undergraduate Projects

Electricity is one of the most versatile forms of energy as it is easily generated by conversion from other forms, and equally easily converted to these other forms. Individuals, while working out, mostly remain stationary, but release large amounts of energy which must be countered by opposing energy sources or allowed to be wasted. This energy may not find very many uses in its raw form, but conversion to other forms may allow it to do work at no cost. This paper documents the concept, objective, methods, and results of a stationary bike generator system being used to convert the …

Stationary Bike Generator System (Drive Train), Abdullah Adel Alsuhaim

All Undergraduate Projects

This paper is about generating electricity while exercising on a stationary bike. Our objective is to utilize the lost power in gym`s bikes to supply commonly used electronic devises on campus. Mechanical energy produced by workout will be used to charge students’ laptops, tablets, cellphone, and other small electrical devices. This project will be helpful to reduce the usage of electricity and also to people who are in need for electrical power. The focus of this paper is the drive train part of the project. Timing pulleys and a timing belt were used to transmit the angular movement of the …

Pin Router Duplicator Base, Matthew Tebo

All Undergraduate Projects

The idea for the following project came from the Lean Manufacturing class that is offered at Central Washington University. In this class the manufacturing processes is demonstrated through the production of guitar kits. A problem with the class is that the CNC machine gets backed up causing a bottleneck in the production line. The solution to this problem was to make a pin router duplicator. A pin router duplicator is a device that allows the operator to trace a finished part with a pin while a router mimics its movements, cutting a new part. The component that is looked into …