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Full-Text Articles in Mechanical Engineering
Mems 411: The Pill Cutter, Alex Posly, Alex Austin, Drew Marolf, Dylan Stubbs
Mems 411: The Pill Cutter, Alex Posly, Alex Austin, Drew Marolf, Dylan Stubbs
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
The goal of this design project was to improve the current method of pill cutting for STL Hills Pharmacy. Pharmacists and other medical professionals cut hundreds of pills weekly. Their current methods can only cut one pill at a time with an error rate of 50%. Pills are often split without enough precision and need to be thrown out. Our project was designed to have a 10% maximum error rate, require 1/4 of the force, and split pills 4 times as fast.
Mems 411: The Amazing Renewable Race, Kayla Murphy, Alitzel Yépiz, Daryl Wilson, Rebecca Davis
Mems 411: The Amazing Renewable Race, Kayla Murphy, Alitzel Yépiz, Daryl Wilson, Rebecca Davis
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
The project’s goal was to convey the importance of renewable energy to a 6 through 12 years old audience. This demo was designed to be installed at the St. Louis Science Center. To engage a younger audience, the renewable energy demonstration had to be interactive. As a result, a design similar to a carnival game was chosen. There are 3 stations that represent wind, hydroelectric, and solar energy. In this design, it is a multiplayer interactive race that portrays renewable energy. The initial design was to have each form of energy produced by the users. The user at the hydro …
Mems 411: Compact Sewing Pin Dispenser, Jacob L. Weinstein, Eric Y. Lu, Nick J. Armanino
Mems 411: Compact Sewing Pin Dispenser, Jacob L. Weinstein, Eric Y. Lu, Nick J. Armanino
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
Sewing pins are small and hard to handle, and managing the pins can be very distracting (or painful) for a sewist. Our goal was to design a simple and easy sewing pin dispenser for a home sewist that can dispense small headed dressmaker pins. For our design to be a viable product, it would have to dispense pins very quickly, accurately, and safely. Additionally, it has to handle many pins at the same time so it does not have to be reloaded during use. Based on the design of a toothpick dispenser, our prototype small, lightweight, and portable device that …
Mems 411: Self Lacing Shoes, Peter Pigatti, Bryce Roberts, Al-Amin Yusuf
Mems 411: Self Lacing Shoes, Peter Pigatti, Bryce Roberts, Al-Amin Yusuf
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
For our senior design project we have chosen to design and prototype a pair of self lacing shoes with the initial target audience being people with disabilities who are limited in their ability to tie their own shoes for a variety of reasons. However, we hope that this product will catch on in popularity and become normalized for all people. These shoes will allow the wearer to easily slip them on and then secure the shoes to the foot with the push of a button rather than tying laces as in conventional shoes. This process will be driven by a …
Mems 411: Lost Grains Winnower, Seth Jack, Matthew Finer, Alex Maggioni, Kristian Nilsen
Mems 411: Lost Grains Winnower, Seth Jack, Matthew Finer, Alex Maggioni, Kristian Nilsen
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
This project involved designing an upgrade for the grain winnower in Dr. Mueller’s anthropology lab at Washington University in St. Louis. A winnower is a device that separates chaff from usable grain after harvesting and threshing. Many such devices exist, from industrial-scale winnowers sorting high volumes of grain to personal coffee bean winnowers. However, the constraints of the lab space and the specialized nature of the grain being winnowed presented specific constraints. An interview with Dr. Mueller was necessary to determine a ranked list of needs for use in the final product. After creating these rankings, a mock-up was used …
Mems 411: Portable Bridge Crane, Alex Eckels, Will Hurley, Zarya Desouza, Troy Bauer
Mems 411: Portable Bridge Crane, Alex Eckels, Will Hurley, Zarya Desouza, Troy Bauer
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
The team designed and built a portable bridge crane for use in class demonstrations. The design was be based off a typical gantry crane, which consists of a trolley spanning across two horizontal parallel beams that are part of a gantry with a payload hanging from the trolley. The group also needed to design the gantry itself and ensure it was both stable enough to support the trolley and payload at the desired operation speeds as well as scaled properly for the desired use.
Mems 411: The Adjustable Bit Brace, Alex Levy, Alex Dutton, Daniel Luberda, Aidan Murphy
Mems 411: The Adjustable Bit Brace, Alex Levy, Alex Dutton, Daniel Luberda, Aidan Murphy
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
This group set out to create an open-source adjustable bit brace as a tool to lower the barrier to entry for smaller individuals looking to pick up tools and work on DIY projects. The brace is designed to highlight 3D printed parts, as well as components that can be fabricated at home by an experienced maker. The design uses standard adjustment mechanisms such as button clips and bolts to bring the bit brace from full size down to 2/3 scale in seconds. The device is advised by engineering models, FEA analysis, stiffness/strength targets, and destructive testing protocols to create a …
Mems 411: Dressmaker Pin Dispenser, Alex Goertz, Henry Holtz, Seamus Boyle, Youngjin Hong
Mems 411: Dressmaker Pin Dispenser, Alex Goertz, Henry Holtz, Seamus Boyle, Youngjin Hong
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
The goal of this project was to design, manufacture, and test a machine which can dispense dressmaker pins in a consistent orientation, allowing the user can easily, and safely remove them one at a time. The purpose of the machine is to increase the efficiency and safety of sewers who may use dressmaker pins daily.
Mems 411: Ground Work Station Design Project, Jakub A. Gawedzki, Mark H. Wood, John B. Campoverde
Mems 411: Ground Work Station Design Project, Jakub A. Gawedzki, Mark H. Wood, John B. Campoverde
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
Researchers from Washington University had requested us to design and develop a ground work station that allows them to work comfortable in the field for our senior design class.
Mems 411: Automatic Sewing Pin Dispenser, Edric Choi, Enrico Milletti, Adrian Odamtten, Chad Picerni
Mems 411: Automatic Sewing Pin Dispenser, Edric Choi, Enrico Milletti, Adrian Odamtten, Chad Picerni
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
The aim of our project is to design and embody an automatic pin dispenser for our customer, Melanie, a recreational sewer. Namely, our pin dispenser design aims to address the need for sewers to safely receive and handle dressmaker pins with one hand whilst working with garments. We have identified three main performance goals for an automatic pins dispenser: Store at least 50 pins at a time, produce at least 1 pin every 2-3 seconds, and present at least 90% of all sorted pins in an upward orientation to the user. These performance goals were identified by interviewing our customer …
Mems 411: Portable Ground Work Station - Group C, Samantha Hudson, Valeria Pinedo Chipana, Valentina Harding, Luis Acosta
Mems 411: Portable Ground Work Station - Group C, Samantha Hudson, Valeria Pinedo Chipana, Valentina Harding, Luis Acosta
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
Build a ergonomic, portable, and weather resistant ground work station for members of the department of Biology to use during field research.
Mems 411: St. Louis Science Center Vibration Station, Allie Periman, Hailey Hayes, Brian Higgins
Mems 411: St. Louis Science Center Vibration Station, Allie Periman, Hailey Hayes, Brian Higgins
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
Student groups work on an open-ended mechanical design problem and finish the semester with a physical prototype, a design report, and a presentation delivered to an external review board. Groups are guided through the engineering design process by completing a set of project deliverables. The quality of these deliverables provides a basis for the evaluation of individual and team performance. This course emphasizes the importance of user-centric design, communication and presentation skill, consideration of real-world constraints, sketching and creativity, prototyping, and data-driven decision-making using engineering models and analyses.
Mems 411: Arliss Canister Vehicle, Patrick Smith, Brannon Boyd, Matthew Donaldson, Kieran Natarajan
Mems 411: Arliss Canister Vehicle, Patrick Smith, Brannon Boyd, Matthew Donaldson, Kieran Natarajan
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
To design, build, and test an autonomous canister vehicle to compete in the ARLISS competition. Design must autonomously drive to a given set of GPS coordinates, record and store GPS data during operation, survive a parachute drop, and traverse rough, uneven terrain.
Mems 411: Portable Bridge Crane With Pulleys, Daniel Shen, Man Kit Mau, Haoxiang Lu, Kaijun Xu
Mems 411: Portable Bridge Crane With Pulleys, Daniel Shen, Man Kit Mau, Haoxiang Lu, Kaijun Xu
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
The bridge crane demonstrates dynamics behavior that the flexible mode has a natural frequency depending on the string length. In this project, a portable bridge crane is designed and made to demonstrate this dynamical phenomena by changing speed and string length. The portable bridge crane requires a light mass and a small size. At the same time, because it needs to be observed in a two-dimensional plane, the trolley must be able to move horizontally on a bridge with tracks, and the speed of the trolley needs to be controlled by a speed controllable motor. The crane needs to suspend …
Group E: Improved Greens Harvester, Paige Grittner, Paul Harding, Ned Curran, Jennifer Mata
Group E: Improved Greens Harvester, Paige Grittner, Paul Harding, Ned Curran, Jennifer Mata
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
The Improved Greens Harvester is a project designing an improved machine that will be used to harvest crops by our client, EarthDance Organic Farm School in Ferguson, MO. The goal of our design was to provide a simple, easy-to-use, and easyto-fix machine that would cut and collect baby green leaves as the user walks along the plant bed. We first sought to address issue with the client’s current machine including low cutting accuracy, strain on the user’s body, frequent jamming, and low efficiency. Our initial design was a cart design that included: an oscillating blade for cutting, a rotating rope-shaft …
Group S- Arliss Project, Preston Bailey, Zach Stelwagon, Cal Reynolds, James Hardy
Group S- Arliss Project, Preston Bailey, Zach Stelwagon, Cal Reynolds, James Hardy
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
Our project was the ARLISS competition project, more specifically the second part of the project where the vehicle must survive a drop and drive to a known location over rough desert terrain. We interviewed our professor, Dr. Potter, who had previous experience with the project to understand what was required in our design. The project started with creating concept ideas and deciding on one, which initially was an airplane to avoid designing a landing mechanism and having to drive over rough terrain. However, this design proved to have too many flaws and was scrapped. The new design was a small …
Asme Design Challenge: The Jenga Stacker, Zachary Lin, Alex Chernauskas, Mitch Dorsey, Alex Remmers
Asme Design Challenge: The Jenga Stacker, Zachary Lin, Alex Chernauskas, Mitch Dorsey, Alex Remmers
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
The 2020 ASME Design Challenge requires teams to build a compact engineering system capable of manufacturing a tower made exclusively from standard-sized sheets of paper. The validation of the design will include testing for manufacturing speed, height of tower, and ability to support a load. Our senior design project focuses on the stacking mechanism and is designed to stack a 4 in x 4 in tower out of prepared 4 in x 1.5 in x 1.75 in paper boxes from the ground up.
Improved Greens Harvester, Sharon Park, Khalil Clark, Millyn Brieschke
Improved Greens Harvester, Sharon Park, Khalil Clark, Millyn Brieschke
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
This paper attempts to provide a prototype of the improved greens harvester. Some inconveniences of the users, including not able to cut greens at a constant length, greens getting clogged in between the brush and the basket, and the need to empty the basket a lot of times. This paper describes problem understanding, concept generation, concept selection, concept embodiment, working prototype, and design refinement. Through these analyses and processes, an improved greens harvester solving the inconveniences is designed. The improved greens harvester has a higher greens harvester with wheels that makes using the harvester less troublesome. Band saw is stuck …
Group A: Asme Student Design Challenge, Dakshi Jindal, Ashley Perry, Ben Liao
Group A: Asme Student Design Challenge, Dakshi Jindal, Ashley Perry, Ben Liao
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
This year's student design competition is termed "Building to the Sky." Student teams are required to build a compact engineering system capable of manufacturing a tower made of only standard-sized sheets of paper.
Mems 411 Group L (Fall 2019) - Speedy Seeder Final Report, Michael Morrow, Christopher Nelson, Ross Frame
Mems 411 Group L (Fall 2019) - Speedy Seeder Final Report, Michael Morrow, Christopher Nelson, Ross Frame
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
The Speedy Seeder or ”SS” is a device designed to decrease the time it takes to fill one seed plot by hand to roughly sixteen percent of the time. The customer of the SS is EarthDance Organic Farms School. EarthDance fills a large number of plots each year by placing a seed in every single compartment which come in three sizes: 32, 72, and 128 compartments per plot. Filling a single plot by hand can take roughly 8 minutes. The SS makes filling a plot much easier and faster, allowing a single plot to be filled in under 75 seconds. …
3d Chocolate Printer Bed Design, Dean Oken, Jacob Margolin, Ben Hartmann, Sam Grossman
3d Chocolate Printer Bed Design, Dean Oken, Jacob Margolin, Ben Hartmann, Sam Grossman
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
The client wished for a device to gain the interest of young undergraduate students into basic thermal science and fluid dynamics concepts. A 3D printer bed was created from concept to prototype design and paired with chocolate dropper teams to complete the project and accomplish the client's goals.
Violin Bow-Hand Prosthetic, Ron Hayes Jr, Kc Cook, Romario Lobban, Muriel Drexler
Violin Bow-Hand Prosthetic, Ron Hayes Jr, Kc Cook, Romario Lobban, Muriel Drexler
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
The violin bow-hand prosthetic aims to mimic the natural hold and motion of a violinist’s bow-hand. The prosthetic is for a violinist who is missing the majority of their hand, but still has full range of motion in the wrist. Focusing on maintaining a natural playing style greatly influenced the design of the device to be user safe, durable, comfortable, easy to use, inexpensive, and practical. Many of these features were achieved by using 3D printed plastic and foam composites. These materials were selected based on strength and deflection analyses of 3-D simulations performed in SolidWorks and the ease of …
Group M: Arliss Canister Vehicle, Greyson Bourgeois, Eleanor Macklin, Romail Dawani, Rachel Sample
Group M: Arliss Canister Vehicle, Greyson Bourgeois, Eleanor Macklin, Romail Dawani, Rachel Sample
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
This project is a dicycle designed for the ARLISS Canister Competition. In this competition, the device is loaded into a rocket which is then launched to about 12000 ft before releasing the device. Then it must safely land and autonomously navigate to a predetermined GPS location on the ground. Due to the fact that this is a mechanical engineering design project and the time restrictions of this class, we focused on the physical aspect of the project, such as building a device that can survive the launch and landing and traverse several kilometers through the desert, forgoing the autonomous navigation …
T-Shirt Strip Dispenser, Maxwell Dimgba, Syeda Mohsin, Sabrina Nguyen
T-Shirt Strip Dispenser, Maxwell Dimgba, Syeda Mohsin, Sabrina Nguyen
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
There is a massive amount of waste around the textile industry. New garments are constantly being made and old garments are consistently finding themselves in landfills. This project aims to cut down on this waste. Mary Susan RuppertStroescu of the Sam Fox School at Washington University in St. Louis has developed a process to turn old garments into new ones in a practice known as up-cycling. By cutting old garments into half-inch strips, laying and adhering them flat on a sheet of dissolvable paper, and sewing over them in interesting patterns she is able to create extraordinary new designs. This …
Violin Bow-Hand Prosthetic, Jonathan Smith, Jonathon Azziz, Shawn Pavey
Violin Bow-Hand Prosthetic, Jonathan Smith, Jonathon Azziz, Shawn Pavey
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
The violin bow hand prosthetic was designed for a young violin player seeking to upgrade the functionality of his current violin prosthetic device. His current device is rigid, forcing him to play mostly with his shoulder. Since the strength of his wrist was unknown, we designed a prosthetic with enough brace flexibility to enable the user to control the bow motion with his own wrist. We also added an axis of rotation and spring mechanism to supplement this motion and provide him the equivalence of fine finger adjustments. The full design process of the prosthetic is documented in this report, …
Group N: Fluid Flow Testing Apparatus, Jonathan Fleming, Braden Kerr, Abel Soloman
Group N: Fluid Flow Testing Apparatus, Jonathan Fleming, Braden Kerr, Abel Soloman
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
A fluid flow testing apparatus was needed to accurately test valves relative to the conditions seen in the factory of a local St. Louis brewery. After concept generation, a rotating track that toggled the valve between open and closed was decided on by the team. Construction of an initial prototype was done over 3 weeks with a total budget of 400 USD. The initial prototype satisfied almost all of the performance goals: capable of cycling 200 times without intervention, 1 paper-towel of leakage at most, and upper reservoir level consistency within 10 percent. To improve the initial prototype, the team …
Lupd - Leisure Underwater Propulsion Device, James Abraham, Tanner Nordell, Holden Schmidt, Noah Trimark
Lupd - Leisure Underwater Propulsion Device, James Abraham, Tanner Nordell, Holden Schmidt, Noah Trimark
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
The main objective of this Design Project was to create a hands-free, wearable underwater propulsion device. The target consumer is leisure divers, so managing cost was important. Current products on the market do not allow divers to be hands-free while diving and are very expensive. The design process began with an interview with Josh An, a Masters Degree candidate at Washington University in St. Louis. Josh is an avid diver and wanted to see if it was possible to develop a cheap underwater jet pack for leisure diving. After multiple design concepts and mock up prototypes, our team decided on …
Violin Prosthetic, Justin Kransdorf, Julia Rifkin, Hayden Reynolds, Payal Hukeri
Violin Prosthetic, Justin Kransdorf, Julia Rifkin, Hayden Reynolds, Payal Hukeri
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
Sam, an 11-year-old violin player was born without fingers or a thumb on his right hand. In order to learn the basics of violin, he currently uses a custom made prosthetic that allows him to hold a violin bow. However, his current prosthetic does not allow for the bow angle to change relative to his wrist, and thus, he cannot perform many techniques that are important to him furthering his violin skills. Specifically, his prosthetic allows Sam to use only a small percentage of the bow. For this project, a prosthetic was designed for Sam with the goal being to …
Ice Cream Dispensing Machine, Katie Bahnck, Rachel Lockwood, Marie White, Simone Raeth
Ice Cream Dispensing Machine, Katie Bahnck, Rachel Lockwood, Marie White, Simone Raeth
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
Each August, Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) welcomes hundreds of new engineering students to its McKelvey School of Engineering. Historically, during orientation activities, WashU’s Engineering Student Services (ESS) serves dessert bars to the new students, where they must line up and make their own desserts manually. To make the dessert bar more interactive and give students a primer for what their engineering studies hold, we would like to introduce an ice cream sundae making machine to the spread. A semi-automated ice cream machine would allow students to customize their ice cream sundae while observing the everyday mechanics required to …
Automated Whiteboard Eraser, Trent Houpt, Tyler Polasek, Kenny Huang, Rocky Luo
Automated Whiteboard Eraser, Trent Houpt, Tyler Polasek, Kenny Huang, Rocky Luo
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
The Automated Whiteboard Eraser is a product designed to erase whiteboards with the touch of a button. With this product students and teachers will be able to save time and energy as they can continue to work without having to stop and erase. From our research others have attempted to construct similar products. We intend to improve these thoughts and designs in order to build a better and more efficient product.