Engineering Commons^™

Dupont Seal Mold Assembly Machine, Brett Biederman, Craig Hanchett, Matthew Chilton

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The Seal Assembly Machine is a custom-built device that is designed to seat a thin polymer part between two mating pieces of metal tooling. To meet the specifications of the sponsor, the Seal Assembly machine must perform its function more quickly and accurately than manual labor at the same task. At the time of compiling this report, the machine is not yet functional due to time constraints.

Zip Shoes, Derek Ford, Garret Freund

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

For our honors project we intend to create a new urban mobility solution. They are called Zip Shoes; they will be a pair of shoes with built in propulsion. We plan to use our cumulative engineering knowledge to modify an existing pair of shoes such that they can safely propel the user on wheels. We hope to achieve this by adding an electric drive train and necessary structural components onto the shoes. We are pursuing this project because we have seen the popularity of other electronically driven personal transportation devices. These include the hover board, electric skateboards, and electric scooters. …

Golf Club Cleaner, Owen Roach, Chris Wertenberger, Michael Skerlong

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Cleaning golf clubs can be a tedious process, however a necessary one to maintain equipment. Clubs are normally cleaned by filling a bucket with soap and water, soaking all the clubs to be cleaned, then scrubbing each one individually. An automatic club cleaner would make this process much easier and more enjoyable. Using electric motors, the club cleaner would have spinning brushes in soap and water to quickly and easily clean the club head. The machine would have different sections for cleaning the club head, polishing the club face, and cleaning the grip. The cleaner should be inexpensive and easy …

Npt Test Machine, Lauren Cash

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Located at the Research facility at The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, the Non-Pneumatic Tire (NPT) Program is currently in the prototype phase. However, airless tire structures are quickly gaining popularity as an alternative to a traditional pneumatic tire. The NPT Test Machine is a measurement fixture that will perform a series of evaluations to determine the stiffness of an NPT; this will allow the program to expand and evolve more rapidly into a manufacturing phase. In this Senior Design Project, a complete test solution was researched, designed, built, programmed, and validated so that data can be collected, and tires …

Recycled Printer Filament, Charlotte Hyland, Troy D. Molinar

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this research is to examine the effects of recycling PLA filament for 3D printing on its material properties. After examining these effects, PLA and carbon fiber additives were mixed with recycled PLA pellets in different ratios to attempt to regain material properties lost in the recycling process. To complete these findings, an experiment was design and executed.

The research found that tensile strength during multiple iterations of recycling remained mostly unaffected, however, the strain degraded exponentially. In the PLA additive study, high ratios of PLA additive were able to increase the strength and strain properties of the …

Ballistic Impact Mitigation Pad, Adam Pianalto, Nathan Mayer, Wyatt Smith, Nick Green, Douglas Wild

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

In our senior design project we have decided to work under Dr. Jon Gerhardt on creating a gel pad to mitigate blunt force behind bulletproof vests. Extensive research on injury, materials, manufacturing methods, and NIJ standards was completed during this project. Through the use of advanced modeling software and additive manufacturing, we prototyped a functioning pad to test and compare to a pad that is currently available in today's market. The results proved to be very successful, but there are many areas to improve upon down the road.