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Full-Text Articles in Mechanical Engineering
Inverted Fluorescence Microscope, Matthew B. Pfeiffer, Spencer George Hann, Thomas James Eggenberger, Trevor Lee Blythe
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 …
Water Jet Cutting Head Actuator, Jacob D. Augustynovich
Water Jet Cutting Head Actuator, Jacob D. Augustynovich
Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects
In an effort to increase efficiency and productivity, WARDJet was seeking a better actuation method for the cutting head on their waterjets. Current actuation methods were, for the most part, purely mechanical, relying on compressed air, springs, and water pressure to open and close the valve to 60,000 psi of water. Increasing the speed of the on/off cycle times of the waterjet would allow for faster movements of the cutting head from one cut to the next, increasing the overall amount of products cut in a day, week, and year. This obviously points to increased sales, increased profit, and increased …
Sparse Aperture Speckle Interferometry Telescope Active Optics Control System, Matthew Clause
Sparse Aperture Speckle Interferometry Telescope Active Optics Control System, Matthew Clause
Master's Theses
A conventional large aperture telescope required for binary star research is typically cost prohibitive. A prototype active optics system was created and fitted to a telescope frame using relatively low cost components. The active optics system was capable of tipping, tilting, and elevating the mirrors to align reflected star light. The low cost mirror position actuators have a resolution of 31 nm, repeatable to within 16 nm. This is accurate enough to perform speckle analysis for the visible light spectrum. The mirrors used in testing were not supported with a whiffletree and produced trefoil-like aberrations which made phasing two mirrors …