Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Mems 411: Bamboo Clamping Device, Grace Chen, Anya Gupta, Yosef Weiss

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The objective of this design project was to create an automatic clamping machine to
keep bamboo bundles tight during lashing. Currently, manual clamping and lashing
of bamboo require simultaneous user effort, posing challenges in terms of efficiency
and safety. Our project introduces a mechanical and automatic clamping tool,
designed to significantly alleviate the physical strain on users and enhance overall
safety. This report details two primary designs of solutions to this problem. The
first is a motor-tightened hose clamp controlled via a three-way switch. The second
design is a claw clamp with an inflatable pouch used to pin the bamboo …

Mems 411: Dialysqueeze, Ranch Kimball, Maeve Lomax, Tyler Carlson

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Design a device to reduce occupational fatigue injuries suffered by nurses who must manually clamp and unclamp tubing for dialysis machines. This device was designed for MEMS 411 Senior Design.

Mems 411: Heavy Cart Ramp Assistant, Ethan Current, Kevin Xiong, Nick Zanchi

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Dr. Katharine Flores has a heavy Argon tank that needs to be put on a scale and wants a device that a single person can operate to assist them in that task.

Mems 411: Swing Energy Demo, Joshua Yoon, Owen Culver, Angel Wan, Gabriel Myong

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

A device to demonstrate the energy processes of a swing was created with the intention of display at the St. Louis Science Center.

Mems 411: Smart Shirt Electronics Housing, Nickolas Allen, Aaron Deleon, Dominic Fulginiti

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Millions of Americans suffer from sleep apnea, a chronic condition that can impact the quality of sleep and livelihood of those impacted by it. The sleep tests that are performed to see if a patient has sleep apnea are very invasive to those that undergo them, but the WUSTL Smart Shirt removes the need for such tests. This biometric shirt contains electrodes that measure blood pressure, heart rates, and EKG diagnostics that create reports to determine if the patient has sleep apnea, removing the need for the invasive sleep tests for a diagnosis. We were tasked with making the electronics …

Mems 411: Pinch Clamp Clipper, Mackenzie Molina, Jaimie Lin, Oliver Avery

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The purpose of this project was to design a device to take stress off the CMC thumb joint when applying pinch clamps to dialysis tubing. The motivation was to reduce the risk of osteoarthritis in renal care nurses. Sydney Livermore, an OT student at McMaster University, identified that nurses who had to routinely clip pinch clamps on dialysis tubes were at risk of developing osteoarthritis in their CMC joints. She asked us to design a device that could clip the pinch clamps while reducing the force required to do so. The device needed to be able to clip the clamps …

Mems 411: Mini-Golf Robot, Matthew J. Sullivan, Jack Nanez, William Urdahl, Eli Cohen

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The following report details the design and construction of a mini-golf robot over
three months. The robot was designed under the standards provided by the
ASME Fall 2023 Design Challenge. The robot would need to traverse the mini-golf
course, completing it in under 10 minutes with the assistance of an attached striker
mechanism. It was necessary that the robot could position itself precisely with
respect to the goofball, while also staying stationary while striking the object. The
robot design timeline followed the guidelines of the engineering design process, with
concept generation, concept selection, prototype embodiment and design refinement
all playing …

Mems 411: Mini-Golf Robot Vehicle, Catherine Huang, Shicheng Li, Colin Chen, Maximilian Li

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The primary objective of the project is to develop a remote-controlled vehicle capable of completing a round of mini golf as part of the ASME Student Design Competition. The vehicle’s functionalities are categorized into driving and golf-ball striking. Our group is specifically responsible for the former aspect.

The remote-controlled vehicle is expected to traverse through the designated competition field and exhibit the ability to maneuver between and over obstacles, including a high wall and a low platform. Our design should adhere to the competition regulations set forth by ASME SDC, which include specific criteria for the vehicle such as size …

Mems 411: Vehicle Entry Aid, Sara Wargo, Joshua Doro, Benjamin Swonger, Justin Stohlman

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Handicapped individuals such as those with prosthetic legs or diabetes can struggle greatly with entering large vehicles such as trucks. In this struggle, a client uses a rigid step stool with a rope tied through it to lift himself and then the stool into the vehicle. This report outlines an initiative to design and manufacture a better solution to this problem. A collapsible, two-step step stool was fabricated with a spring loaded retraction system. The design process for this solution is outline from start to finish, showing the extensive thought process that was followed to create the final product.

Mems 411: In-Beach Pressure Sampler Design Report, Alex Mccormick, Mark Lipkin, Nirvan Patel Masini, Austin Bick

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Claudio would like a device to put into the beach sand, around nest-depth, to
measure and record data that can determine pressure as waves crash and recede.

Mems 411: Waterproof Enclosure For Smart Shirt Microcontroller, Josh Towns, Eric Montufar-Morales, Jacob Williams

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The purpose of this project was to create an enclosure for a microcontroller for an electronic shirt, made by Dr. Mary Ruppert-Stroescu. The electronic shirt was made to help people with sleep apnea track their EKG, blood pressure, and heart rate in an easy and non-invasive way.

The current design being used has sharp edges and is not very secure. The goal of our new design was to make the enclosure comfortable to the wearer while also maintaining a water tight seal. This was done through multiple iterations of rounded enclosures with different gaskets. The end design was a two …

Mems 411: Medical Clamp, Edis Skampo, Rodery Gonzalez, Sokcheatra Samrith, Sean Lucas

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The goal of the team was to design a plier that would be able to clamp down a medical clamp used for a dialysis machine. Ideally the plier should be able to clamp down 3 medical clamps on three separate dialysis tubes in less than 5 seconds, reduce the force required to clamp those clamps by 4 times, and weigh less than 113 grams. The product design was broken down into 3 separate concepts, with four options for each component. The most preferable option of each component was chosen and several risk factors were taken in consideration so that the …

Mems 411: Piston Pong, Lauren Faust, Emma Kroll, Natalie Fisher, Caroline Ferry

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

This report documents the design process of our ”Piston Pong” device. Our device was designed to be an educational demonstration of pneumatics and energy transformations using work and fluids models. The concept is that a bike pump will pump air into a holding container. After enough pressure is built up inside, the air will be released from the holding tank to a pneumatic cylinder. The cylinder will be released, hitting and launching a ball into the air. Additionally, force and pressure sensors would allow the energy to be calculated to fully understand the energy transformation. Our priorities for this design …

Mems 411: Heavy Cart Ramp Assistant, Caelyn Walton-Macaulay, Eniya Jaber, Nashleen Salazar Rodriguez

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Some experiments in Prof. Kathy Flores’s lab use argon gas, which is stored in a
big tank. A scale is used to determine how much gas is left in the tank.
To get the tank onto the scale, a person must roll it up a short, fairly steep ramp
onto the scale platform. There is a ramp on the other side of the scale too, so
overshooting the platform causes the ramp to crash into the wall (the lab has taped a foam bumper onto the wall to mitigate this). Once finished, the cart is rolled
back down the ramp, …

Mems 411: 3d Clay Printer, Nanami Mezaki, Isabelle Sasser, Garrett Radtke, Juliana Bush

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The Washington University School of Architecture has a class called Digital Ceramics, that utilizes a 3D Printer that prints clay instead of plastic filament. Students use this device to make art projects. As interesting as this device is, it isn’t without problems. Our team decided to tackle some of the problems involved which we recognized to be: long set-up and tear-down times, and unsuccessful prints due to nozzle falling out.

Mems 411: Pinskee Ball - A Work-Energy Demo, Kyle Puckett, Helena Teixeira-Dasilva, Seth Kleinberg, Sydney Norstad

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The goal of our project is to develop a fun and engaging Work-Energy Demo for Dr. James Potter of Washington University in St. Louis and a Science Center or Children's Museum. We aim to teach 6 - 10 year old children about Work-Energy and Energy Transfer in a fun, engaging, and competitive way by using an arcade style machine. The following project is intended to be a Pinball-Based Conservation of Energy Demo/Game for a Science Museum. Using both pinball and skeeball characteristics, this device will give kids thorough knowledge of work energy systems in a fun and interactive way. The …