Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

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: 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: 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: 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: 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 …

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Frame Redesign For A Dac Machine, Alyssa Bolander, Aaron Lombardi, Harry Hixson

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

This report focuses on the redesign of a 3’’ T-slot aluminum DAC frame. This design process focuses on minimizing cost and fasteners as the new frame will be made out of welded square steel tubing.

Mems 411: Torsion Tester Design Report, Ethan Bandick, Sean Wong, Jacob Sandler, Matthew Lorberg

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The goal of this project is to provide the customer, Dr. James Jackson Potter, with a lightweight, inexpensive, and accurate alternative to modern, professional torsion-testing machines. The torsion tester developed by this team will be used in a classroom setting for design competitions on 3-D printed ABS plastic torsion bars; therefore the design also accommodate a range of functions which might be useful to the customer during testing competitions, potentially including automatic stopping at failure, a reset function, and the ability to create custom functions which can integrate into the existing function library.

Mems 411: Racecar Cruise Control, Jonah Spencer, Jacob Wheelock, Amay Kejriwal

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The WashU Racing team is a student group at formula student which annually designs, builds, and tests a 1/3rd scale formula racecar. This project explores the use of an electronically actuated throttle to implement cruise control on the WashU Racing formula student racecar. Through the use of new and existing sensors on the car, in depth engine modeling, and vehicle dynamics, our team was able to make the car accelerate up to and maintain a certain speed

Mems 411: Remotely Operated Rock Collecting Vehicle, Perry Brody, Toby Utterback, Annie Mascot, Bianca Lang

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

We were tasked with designing a remote-controlled vehicle that is capable of collecting and holding “rocks”. The device had to be battery powered and operated by an RC transmitter/receiver. The physical constraints required the vehicle to fit within the designated 5.25’’ diameter and 8.5’’ long cylinder. The goal was to maximize the number of "rocks" collected in 5 minutes.

Mems 411: Group Q Rock-Collecting Rover, William Pohl, Kieran Conjar, Chris Mabley, Major Kc

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Design a remote controlled Rock-Collecting Rover that can store 35 rocks while moving, can navigate a snake-track without hitting the lines in 5 minutes, and can successfully collect 80% of the rocks it approaches.

Mems 411: Graphene Flake Finder, Calvin Ball, Jonathon Hansen, Ivan Jaramillo

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Graphene is an allotrope of carbon, a monolayer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb-like structure. It is a zero-gap semiconductor, has a high opacity, has a large thermal conductivity, and has the largest intrinsic tensile strength known to humankind so far. It is not yet utilized in the industry as graphene is not efficient or cost-effective to mass produce. The production of graphene is done by flakes with tape at Dr. Erik Henrikson’s lab. We will make a motorized microscope stage that helps automate the location identification of graphene flakes that have been mechanically exfoliated onto silicon wafer chips. …

Mems 411: Rock Collection Rover, Group, Kyler Schaetzle, Grant Ryals, Griffin Ancipink, Jackson Powell

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The following report has been prepared for MEMS 411 Mechanical Engineering Design Project and contains information pertaining to the selected project, the Rocker Collecting Rover Contest project. The project required the team to construct a battery-powered, remote-controlled rover that is operated with a first-person camera and can collect “rocks” and hold them off the ground without damaging them. The rover will compete in a competition against all other groups to see which group can collect the most rocks in a five-minute period.

Mems 411: T-Shirt Strip Dispenser, Christian Alexander, Joseph Goehring, David / Qifeng Tian, Justin / Jingze Zhou

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

To create a fabric dispenser for Professor Mary Ruppert-Stroescu of the Sam Fox Fashion Design School.

Mems 411: Dog Mobility Aid, Grace Vinson, Amber Griffith, Thomas Liu

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Henry, an 8-year-old dog, suffers from an angular limb deformity. We created a mobility aid for Henry to improve his quality of life. This device functions similarly to a crutch attached to the affected arm to eliminate compressive forces on his metacarpals.

Mems 411 - Prosthetic Arm Group W, Spencer Gladstone, Lila Dickstein, Nate Bloedorn, Matthew Riak

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The customer, Ilana, sought to find a prosthetic arm to replace her current static
prosthetic. She has gotten used to using a prosthetic with no variable grips and
a somewhat heavy weight that can be a burden when dealing with her child or
day to day tasks. The design described in this report is an electronically powered
prosthetic that used a button to change between open and closed grips.

Mems411: We Rock N’ Roverin', Amy L. Xue, Ash Caine, Emily Ma

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

The goal of this project is to create a remotely-controlled rover that can reliably collect dice. The customer, Chiamaka Asinugo, requires a device that meets the needs of a potential challenge that the WURocketry Team might face in future “NASA Student Launch” competitions. These needs include the rover being able to fit into a theoretical payload cylinder that is 5.36" in diameter and 8.5" long and the rover weighing less than 3.5 lbs.

Mems 411: Rock-Collecting Rover, Nathan Fetchel, Derek Bivins, Emerson Hatina

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

This project was a MEMS 411 Senior Design project completed for a potential future WashU Rocketry Team rover contest. The rover was required to be battery operated, controlled by an RC transmitter/receiver, and utilize micro-servo motors for actuation. The rover was required to be navigated via 1st person camera. The rover needed to weigh less than 3.5 lbs, and able to fit into a 5.36" diameter and 8.5" long cylinder. The "rocks" needed to be stored inside the rover and to be collected without using adhesive.

Mems 411: Asme Student Design Vehicle, Raymond Sullivan, Matthew Spichiger, Daniel Melka

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Design a robot to compete in the 2022 ASME Design Competition

Mems 411: Cnc Fabric Dispenser, Hayato Takai, Lizbet Suarez Mendoza, Jp Bermudez, Jeffrey Dai

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

This project aims to help Mary Ruppert-Stroescu with her zero-waste fashion project. The goal of this tool is to help Mary efficiently lay down fabric across a sheet of sticky paper to make a yard of reused fabric. The goal of our team was to create a machine that can work alongside Mary, rather than having her spend all her time at the machine. We wanted to make a machine that can work independently of Mary, so that she can focus her time on other things.

100s of lbs of fabric waste is part of American today. Mary's mission is …

Mems 411: Softball Pitching Machine, Sebastian Laboy, Molly Mcnamara, Thomas Burke

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

This report includes our complete final project for MEMS 411 in the Fall 2022 semester. For this project, we chose to fill the need for a pitching machine solely focused on the needs of softball players. For this project, our customer is a collegiate softball player named McKenna Jablonske.

Mems 411: Best Prosthetic Arm, Zhun Cheng, Finn Witt, Alexander Abdulla, Zhuoqun Wang

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Prosthetic is generally used to aid people with disabilities and perform tasks otherwise hard for them. As our senior design project, we designed and built a prototype prosthetic partial forearm for a customer to be used in her daily life and work. The important needs of the customer towards the prosthetic were identified, which were: being lightweight, simply actuatable, aesthetically discrete, easily detachable, resilient, easy to clean, safe for children, and easy to carry.

Mems 411: Fire Temperature Gradient Sensor, Anna-Sophia Eberhardt, Dexter Allen, Christopher Allen, Mikayla Jenkins

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Fire Temperature Gradient Sensor to understand the interaction between prescribed forest floor burns and tick-borne disease ecology.

Mems 411: T-Shirt Strip Dispenser, Andrei Schwartz, Evan Dorsel, Amy Gong, Rosie Finglass

Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class

Develop a device to facilitate the t-shirt strip lay down process for Prof. Mary Ruppert-Stroescu