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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Gaylord Produce Removal Machine, Marcus Takashi Hirose Lee, Jacob Michael Perlman, Carissa Abigail Kamm, Mark Misao Loera Dec 2021

Gaylord Produce Removal Machine, Marcus Takashi Hirose Lee, Jacob Michael Perlman, Carissa Abigail Kamm, Mark Misao Loera

Mechanical Engineering

This Final Design Review Report outlines the senior design project that began Winter Quarter of 2021 at California Polytechnic State University. Our team consists of three mechanical engineers and a general engineer, working together to design, build, and test a product for Alameda County Food Bank. The goal of the final product is to relieve volunteers and employees of tedious manual labor and increase efficiency during the removal of produce from large Gaylord containers. This document describes background research, the objectives of the project, chosen concept design, analysis and initial prototyping of said concept, the final design, and verification prototype …


Gaf Fiberglass Mat Slitter Blade Sharpener, Mark D. Breaux, Bradley M. Smith, Esteban Carrillo, Carlos Espinoza Dec 2021

Gaf Fiberglass Mat Slitter Blade Sharpener, Mark D. Breaux, Bradley M. Smith, Esteban Carrillo, Carlos Espinoza

Mechanical Engineering

This document contains an overview for the offline slitter blade sharpening system created for GAF to sharpen their current cutting tools in a timely and safe manner without hindering the timeline and production of their assembly line. This design was developed by four undergraduate students at from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. This document first investigates background information of any patents, current sharpening device, sharpening safety standards, or literature review that may be useful in a sharpening mechanism device. This document also contains our design concept prototype, which consists of three main features, the use of a top guard for …


Mug For Veterans With Tremors, Eliot Daniel Briefer, Nicholas Michael Greco, Lucas Paul Martos-Repath, Tiernan Lif Kehoe Dec 2021

Mug For Veterans With Tremors, Eliot Daniel Briefer, Nicholas Michael Greco, Lucas Paul Martos-Repath, Tiernan Lif Kehoe

Mechanical Engineering

This Final Design Review Report outlines the senior design project completed by a team of mechanical engineering students attending California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo for the McGuire Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Richmond, VA. The scope of the project was to design, build, and test a device for veterans with tremors that would allow them to enjoy their favorite drinks comfortably and easily, without worrying about spills. The final product must be lightweight, aesthetic, capable of handling various tremor types, and can be operated in multiple planes to allow the veterans full control over the device. This document …


Development Of A Low-Cost, Photovoltaic-Powered, Automated Water Recovery System, David E. Daley Aug 2021

Development Of A Low-Cost, Photovoltaic-Powered, Automated Water Recovery System, David E. Daley

Master's Theses

An existing water filtration system at the Channel Islands Marine & Wildlife Institute (CIMWI) wastes approximately 25 gallons of water per day rinsing out solid waste under light load. To reduce CIMWI’s water and energy consumption, an automated system was designed and built to recover the rinse water and return it to the existing filtration loop. Models for fluid system requirements, basic energy needs, and photo- voltaic energy generation were created to aid in component selection. Basic sensors and electronics were programmed in Python for use with a Raspberry Pi single board computer to collect and process water recovery data …


Bull Outdoor Products - Electric Grill, Sofie M. Groberman, Makai J. Baker, James T. Andrews Jun 2021

Bull Outdoor Products - Electric Grill, Sofie M. Groberman, Makai J. Baker, James T. Andrews

Mechanical Engineering

Our senior design project team designed, assembled, and tested an outdoor electric grill. The sponsor for our project is Bull Outdoor Products, a high-end outdoor kitchen set, pizza oven, and grill company. We met with our sponsor to discuss project expectations and important product characteristics. We also researched the barbecue market and its customers to determine what grill characteristics are the most important. We learned which engineering specifications needed to be tested and outlined what our goals and overall objectives for this project are. With our background research and overall objectives in mind, we came up with different solutions through …


Tensile Testing Environmental Chamber – Structural, Michael Ingel, Erik Soldenwagner, Austin Marshall, Lauren Schirle Jun 2021

Tensile Testing Environmental Chamber – Structural, Michael Ingel, Erik Soldenwagner, Austin Marshall, Lauren Schirle

Mechanical Engineering

Environmental chambers for tensile testing machines are used to study how a multitude of materials behave in extreme temperatures. These chambers provide the necessary information to innovate cutting edge technology for materials in fields such as aerospace. These chambers are often heavy and expensive requiring a significant amount of time and money just in the installation process alone. This report will serve to outline and define the design and fabrication of an environmental chamber, conducted by a team of four senior mechanical engineering students at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. The goals of the project include a low-weight …


Consumer-Ready Insulated Solar Electric Cooker, Simon Ford, Sachin Gokhale, Brendan Lynn, Richard Nguyen Jun 2021

Consumer-Ready Insulated Solar Electric Cooker, Simon Ford, Sachin Gokhale, Brendan Lynn, Richard Nguyen

Mechanical Engineering

An insulated solar electric cooker, or ISEC, converts solar energy into electricity to cook food, boil water, provide heat or even help charge batteries. In this project, the focus is an ISEC with a phase change material (PCM) that helps store heat when the solar energy input is minimal, such as after the sun has set. Although a successful ISEC already exists that utilizes PCM, this product can be improved in many ways. The specific revisions investigated in this report are the improvement of the thermal efficiency with the implementation of a vacuum-sealed outer pot, the reduction of the overall …


Cnc Feed Drive Control, Ryan J. Funchess, Caleb P. O'Gorman, Nick J. Desimone, Juan M. Majano, Samuel K. Wong Jun 2021

Cnc Feed Drive Control, Ryan J. Funchess, Caleb P. O'Gorman, Nick J. Desimone, Juan M. Majano, Samuel K. Wong

Mechanical Engineering

This document serves as the Final Design Report (FDR) for a senior project developed by our team: four senior Mechanical Engineering students and one computer engineering student at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly). While the project was completed for, and sponsored by, Professor Simon Xing of Cal Poly, the remainder of the university’s controls professors will be indirectly benefited from this project. Our goal was to design and implement a functional CNC Feed Drive to be used for educational demonstrations and data collection. This document discusses our early product research and benchmark goals, which established constraints …


Inverted Fluorescence Microscope, Matthew B. Pfeiffer, Spencer George Hann, Thomas James Eggenberger, Trevor Lee Blythe Jun 2021

Inverted Fluorescence Microscope, Matthew B. Pfeiffer, Spencer George Hann, Thomas James Eggenberger, Trevor Lee Blythe

Mechanical Engineering

Team F13 is composed of Trevor Blythe, Spencer Hann, Matthew Pfeiffer, and Thomas Eggenberger. We are all majoring in mechanical engineering and in our final year of study here at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. This project is a continuation of a 2019-2020 senior project. The previous team designed and built a functioning inverted fluorescence microscope (IFM) from scratch. This device was created as a lab tool for undergraduate students to be able to perform experiments on microfluidic devices constructed in Cal Poly’s Microfabrication Laboratory. Although substantially functional, several design constraints had not yet been met. Our team has improved …


Saver (Surface Autonomous Vehicle For Emergency Rescue), Tyler Jorgensen, Ethan Miller, Josephine Isaacson, Joshua Hoye Jun 2021

Saver (Surface Autonomous Vehicle For Emergency Rescue), Tyler Jorgensen, Ethan Miller, Josephine Isaacson, Joshua Hoye

Mechanical Engineering

This document serves to introduce the design team and their competition challenge, as well as to detail the results of the project. The original design challenge was the NASA Micro-g NExT’s SAVER (Surface Autonomous Vehicle for Emergency Rescue) competition; we were tasked with developing a self-driving water vehicle capable of delivering supplies to Orion astronauts separated from the rest of their crew in the case of a maritime emergency. However, we were not selected to go forward in this competition and thus we decided to scale down the size of the SAVER device to shift the focus of the project …


Adjustable Height Pedestal Grinder Stand, Josef Zagorski, Zachary Wedel, Michael Sitar, Daniel Zevenbergen Jun 2021

Adjustable Height Pedestal Grinder Stand, Josef Zagorski, Zachary Wedel, Michael Sitar, Daniel Zevenbergen

Mechanical Engineering

Pedestal grinders are one of the most common machines found in machine shops today. The current industry standard for mounting a grinder is on a fixed single pillar, cast iron pedestal. A fixed pedestal allows for no vertical adjustment for shop users of different sizes and is a safety hazard. This report further defines this problem and proposes an iterative design process to meet the needs and wants of the customer. The adjustable-height pedestal grinder stand Senior Project team used this problem and design process to successfully complete the project within the allotted time. The first major deliverable and milestone …


Modeling And Control Of A Vertical Hopping Robot, Bradley Y. Kwan Jun 2021

Modeling And Control Of A Vertical Hopping Robot, Bradley Y. Kwan

Master's Theses

Single degree-of-freedom hopping robots are typically modeled as spring loaded inverted pendulums (SLIPs). This simplified model, however, does not consider the overall leg geometry, consequently making it difficult to investigate the optimized inertial distribution of the leg for agile locomotion. To address this issue, the first part of this thesis establishes an accurate mathematical model of a DC-motor-driven, two-link hopping robot where the motors are modeled as torque sources. The equations of motion for the two distinct phases of locomotion (stance and flight) are derived using the Lagrangian approach for holonomic systems. A Simulink/Stateflow model is developed to numerically simulate …


Project G.H.O.S.T., Matthew Morell, Austin Conrad, Zackeris Gordon, Conan Estes Mar 2021

Project G.H.O.S.T., Matthew Morell, Austin Conrad, Zackeris Gordon, Conan Estes

Mechanical Engineering

Project G.H.O.S.T aimed to produce a model transmission with a control system for high performance/racing electric vehicles to utilize the full capability of the electric motor at higher speed applications. Current electric vehicles have a large amount of torque and use a fixed gear ratio that compromises between both high and low speeds with performance peaking around 65 miles per hour. A typical electric motor used in this application has approximately 1800 ft-lbs of torque up to 5,000 rpm. Past approximately 5,000 rpm, the torque rapidly drops off and so does the overall vehicle performance. Though transmissions exist that could …


Smud Solar Regatta, Logan Garby, Nam Le, Jacob Singer, Alejandro Carrera, Laura Casas Mar 2021

Smud Solar Regatta, Logan Garby, Nam Le, Jacob Singer, Alejandro Carrera, Laura Casas

Mechanical Engineering

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) hosts the Solar Regatta every year in Rancho Seco, CA, a competition which consists of teams building a solar powered boat to compete in three races: the sprint race, endurance race, and slalom race. The Cal Poly Solar Regatta team was informed mid-project by SMUD that the competition has been canceled once again for spring 2021, but the team decided to move forward with the construction of the boat. The previous Cal Poly team from 2019/2020 designed the hull and propulsion system of the boat. The 2020/2021 team worked with the previous team in …


Tensile Environment Chamber, Cameron Ngai, Trent Hamilton, Mitchell Carroll, Jack Molitor Jan 2021

Tensile Environment Chamber, Cameron Ngai, Trent Hamilton, Mitchell Carroll, Jack Molitor

Mechanical Engineering

This project created the heating system, cooling system, and control system for an environmental chamber for a tensile test machine in the Cal Poly Composites Lab. This chamber allows for students to test material properties under a variety of thermal conditions. This project was done in collaboration with a team working on the structural aspect of the chamber. While consumer environmental chambers are on the market, they often cost more than $50,000. Additionally, our chamber conforms to further size and weight constraints. Because of this constraint, many conventional techniques and components used for these chambers are not feasible for our …