Engineering Commons^™

Atmospheric Water Harvester, Justin K. Lam, Jacob David, Jessica Mabry, Ben Brough

Mechanical Engineering

Atmospheric water harvesting uses the vapor-compression cycle to collect water from the moisture in the air. The system’s components include an evaporator, condenser, compressor, fan, and several expansion valves. Condensate from the air is then funneled into a receptacle, which determines the efficiency of the water harvesting system. For this senior project, the goal is to increase the efficiency of an existing atmospheric water harvester.

Solar Electric Immersion Heating Element Fabrication, Logan V. Kregness

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Believing that cooking with flame is cheaper and more efficient than cooking with electricity, Ugandan citizens have exposed themselves to several health and safety risks, including major respiratory issues through harmful emissions, pollution, and the burning down of many homes. Even though solar electric cooking is cheaper and healthier than cooking with flames in the long run, many Ugandans lack the resources to invest in cooking with electricity.

The Solar Stove student research team, led by Dr. Pete Schwartz, partnered with Aid Africa to bring solar panels and prototype solar electric cooking units to villages in Uganda. Observing how their …

Improving Efficiencies For The Loading And Packaging Departments At San Luis Sourdough, Alexis Bergstrom, Isabella Pereira, Claudia Robinson

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

San Luis Sourdough, currently has issues with efficiency and standardization in their packaging department, ergonomics problems in the packaging department, shipment accuracy in their loading department, and lacks an organized layout design. As a result, four objectives were designed within a six month period. The first was to create standard operating procedures for the packaging department. To inform this decision time studies were performed before and after creating these SOPs. It was discovered that there was a clear need for the SOPs due to variation in packaging efficiency among new and experienced associates. The second set of time studies showed …

Reducing Overall Overtime Hours Accumulated By San Luis Sourdough, Marie Scholl, Emily Vallejos, Randall Yonce

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The packaging department of San Luis Sourdough Company was redesigned to increase bread throughput and decrease overtime hours issued to employees. Time studies were performed to get an accurate representation of the average throughput of bread with the current packaging conveyor system. After collecting data and surveying the employees and management, we came up with three design solutions to improve their current packaging system. The first design recommendation has a low-investment and is quick to implement as it pertains to changing the worker’s schedule to alleviate the employees from working long hour shifts while increasing the bread throughput. The second …

The Design Of A Digital Scheduling Solution For Healing Alternatives, Hailey A. Malin, Krista L. Mcallester, Anne E. Shields

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The focus of this senior project is to assist Healing Alternatives, an acupuncture clinic located in San Luis Obispo, in developing a business management software to fit their needs and boost their overall organization. The approach to finding the right fit for this business included assessing their current system while simultaneously investigating other providers. Once alternatives were found that met all of Healing Alternatives’ initial requirements, trial demos were generated in order to perform user experience testing. The presented final solution, a scheduling software called Acuity Scheduling, was implemented in a three-phase move plan that occurred over the period of …

Slm Materials Development, Justin G. Reiner, Michael T. Schembri

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The purpose of this project was to create a procedure to efficiently determine a “recipe” of parameter values that create a desired set of mechanical properties. Research was conducted into the laser powder bed fusion process with focus on underdeveloped materials. A design of experiment was used with a set of density correlated parameters to establish a method of producing nearly dense parts. Our methods include SLM printing, metrology, and statistical analysis. An experimental procedure for materials development was designed, but unable to be validated during the scope of this project, due to unforeseen safety issues (exposure to Chromium 6, …

Healing Alternatives Workspace Remodel, Lissandra Ilcyn, Jenifer Astrid Colmenares, Grace E. Kuffner

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Healing Alternatives is an acupuncture office space located in a repurposed house in San Luis Obispo. Healing Alternatives’ current facility layout does not allow for an additional treatment room or the space to provide additional services because of the wasted space within the facility. Furthermore, patients can be disrupted by noise outside the treatment room causing a negative customer experience. The project team’s objectives are to:

o Design two layout alternatives

o Provide a time estimate for each alternative

o Provide a cost analysis of each alternative

o Implement 5s methodology on the storage room

o Provide a 2D-3D model …

Cal Poly Supermileage Drivetrain, Michael Bolton, Justin Miller, Heather Fields

Mechanical Engineering

The following report details the full design process used by the Cal Poly Supermileage Drivetrain (CPSMD) Senior Project team in designing a new drivetrain system for the Cal Poly Supermileage Vehicle (SMV) Team. Included is the development stages of each component, the manufacturing of our parts, the final solution’s assembly, the testing of the project, and the results from the 2018 Shell Eco-Marathon Competition. After collecting data from several tests, only the final drivetrain efficiency and final sprocket alignment remain unknown. Otherwise, the project came in under budget, within our weight tolerance, and met all the other design objectives. The …

Design For Waste Reduction And Efficiency Improvement For The Construction Usage Of The Tower Crane, George Merida, Roman Richard

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Webcor Concrete Group’s on-site tower crane is currently experiencing unknown forms of inefficiency. The project team used the DMAIC methodology to implement Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control in order to guide and structure the project. After the project team formulated a problem statement, observations were collected of tower crane deliveries resulting in 470 individual data points. The data was then analyzed using basic statistics, histograms, and lean manufacturing tools in order to identify wastes and inefficiencies. Once the wastes and inefficiencies were identified, root cause analysis was performed. The identified root causes were then used as the basis for …

Haas Automation Umc750 5axis Mill Assembly Process Improvement, Mason A. Garcia, Gregory R. Gunion, Juan Pablo Quinonez Weston

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The improvement of the current assembly of the motor and casting components for the Haas UMC-750 5-Axis vertical CNC mill includes the evaluation, development and proposal of a new pair of material handling carts. To meet these deliverables, a student team began by assessing the assembly workstation, defining the problem to be solved, researching ergonomics in material handling equipment and drafting the final design of the improved cart models using SolidWorks. The final design considered the initial improvement request from the client, as well as better ergonomic features to enhance the safety of the operators. It was estimated that the …

Efficiency Testing Of An Electronic Speed Controller, Grace Cowell, Matthew Hudson, Marcus Pereira

Mechanical Engineering

This project required the development of a rig that could experimentally determine the efficiency of an Electronic Speed Controller (ESC). The selected design focuses on measuring the losses due to heat from the device and comparing this to its input power. The selected design is a flow rig that utilizes the heat equation q=ṁcpΔT. The rig provides a steady state measurement of the ESC heat output by passing a known mass flow rate of air across the ESC and measuring the temperature difference. It uses a flowmeter to determine ṁ, thermocouples to determine ΔT, and a table lookup to determine …

Modeling And Test Of The Efficiency Of Electronic Speed Controllers For Brushless Dc Motors, Clayton R. Green

Master's Theses

Small electric uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAV) represent a rapidly expanding market requiring optimization in both efficiency and weight; efficiency is critical during cruise or loiter where the vehicle operates at part power for up to 99% of the mission time. Of the four components (battery, motor, propeller, and electronic speed controller (ESC)) of the electric propulsion system used in small UAVs, the ESC has no accepted performance model and almost no published performance data. To collect performance data, instrumentation was developed to measure electrical power in and out of the ESC using the two wattmeter method and current sense resistors; …

Technology Portal For Energy Efficient Buildings, Larry D. Hermanson, Daniel Studer, Annie Mroz

STAR Program Research Presentations

Project: Technology Portal for Energy Efficient Buildings

Date: August 2, 2012

Author: Larry Hermanson

Mentor: Daniel Studer

Cohort: Annie Mroz

Lab site: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)

Buildings account for 71% of the electricity demand and 39% of the primary energy consumption in the United States. The Commercial Buildings Group at NREL provides builders, designers and building owners accurate information to significantly improve the energy efficiency of new and existing buildings. The Technology Portal for Energy Efficient Buildings will increase the accessibility of standardized and credible energy performance data for all building systems, thereby allowing building owners to better evaluate …

Pump Sequencing Optimization, John S. Allan, Kyle J. Nekimken, Spencer B. Weills

Mechanical Engineering

The purpose of this document is to demonstrate the design, production, and testing of optimum pump sequencing logic for variable frequency drive (VFD) pumps in commercial heating ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. The product will be developed by Pump Efficiency Solutions (PES), which is a group of Cal Poly students working on their senior project. The product is being developed for Trane, an industry leader in large scale HVAC systems. MATLAB™, Microsoft Excel, Pump System Improvement Modeling Tool™ (PSIM), and fluid mechanics hand calculations were used during software development. Next, we converted the program into Trane’s graphical programming language …