Manufacturing Commons^™

Tensile Specimen Punch, John Allen

All Undergraduate Projects

This project comes from a need to have tensile specimens made for the MET 351, Metallurgy/Materials and Processes, and 426, Applied Strengths of Materials, labs. This punch is designed to be used with an arbor press to create the desired tensile specimen shape out of plastic blanks. The initial concept was suggested by Dr. Craig Johnson. The designs went through many changes, for example getting rid of the sides originally proposed to hold the specimen in place, and modifications to other parts to make them more efficient. Additional parts were also added to the design with the help and advice …

Built-In Bicycle Rack For Cars, Scott A. Hansberry

All Undergraduate Projects

Transporting a bicycle after riding somewhere and then needing to be pickup can be problematic. Bicycles will not fit in most vehicles without removing components. There is also the risk of damaging the inside of the vehicle. Expecting everyone to have a bike rack for their vehicle is unrealistic because the bike rack could be considered unappealing visually, take up to much space in the trunk, or limit the vehicle owner’s access to the trunk. The solution to this problem is a bike rack that mounts onto your car and then mounts your bike onto the rack. Most people don’t …

Pin Router Duplicator, Daniel Phan

All Undergraduate Projects

The purpose of this project is to develop a pin router duplicator to accurately produce guitar bodies, necks, and fret boards. The pin router duplicator is designed to speed up the production process for the class Lean Manufacturing (MET 345), offered at Central Washington University. In the class, students learn how to work as a team to improve the way a woodshop is ran. In Lean Manufacturing, guitar bodies, necks, and fret boards are produced by using a CNC router. For this project, the motivation is to increase production by reducing production time. Accuracy and repeatability is also taken into …

Weather Balloon Payload Box, Shellbie Liberty

All Undergraduate Projects

A payload box holding a self-rotating camera was constructed to go on a weather balloon that will document the upcoming solar eclipse on August 21, 2017. A group of physics students, and the paper’s author, are working under Dr. Darci Snowden on the CWU Near Space Observation Team for research dedicated to the eclipse in Oregon. Various projects, including the payload box, are being designed to go up on a high altitude weather balloon. The payload box was designed and constructed to withstand the impact force of falling from 120,000 ft. This was done so the box could be reusable …

High Accessibility Cabinet Insert, Matthew Leal

All Undergraduate Projects

Watching grandparents and parents get older, the struggle of day-to-day activities generally increases. One of the most recurring issues the older generation experiences nearly daily is their inability to reach dishes, glassware, and other things on the topmost shelves of a kitchen. Not only is it difficult for them to use things such as stepstools, it also becomes increasingly dangerous. With age, a fall from any height could be catastrophic. With this scenario in mind, a user-friendly cabinet insert would be a very effective way to combat this issue. However, many existing models of cabinet designed to fit these requirements …

H.F. Hauff Outrigger: Vertical Arm, Juan Tovar

All Undergraduate Projects

H.F. Hauff is a company based out of Yakima which specializes in farming equipment. One of their products is a trailer which has a wind machine attached to it. In order to keep the fan’s thrust from tipping the trailer over, the trailer needs outriggers to extend out. The outriggers also serve as a way to level out the trailer in uneven surfaces. The outriggers are what needed to be designed. This portion of the project was the vertical arm which extends from the horizontal arm, and goes towards the ground to raise the trailer. The project consisted of three …

Composite Cold Expansion Tooling, Andrew Amos

All Undergraduate Projects

In the world of aircraft manufacturing, cold expansion products literally hold these aircraft together. The problem faced today is that the Little Brute Hydraulic Puller designed and built by Fatigue Technology Inc. is a handheld steel hydraulic cylinder that is heavy and expensive to produce. In a market that demands continuous improvement, there is a constant push to make the product cheaper, better and lighter. In order to accomplish this demand a composite tube will be substituted in the design as the primary pressure cylinder instead of the traditional steel pressure cylinder in order to create a lighter and cheaper …

Beer Rack On Demand Water Heater, Jason Warenski

All Undergraduate Projects

On-Demand Water Heater (for homebrewing systems)

By Jason Warenski (Engineering Technologies)

The on-demand water heater is being built for a home brewing system. The is intended to improve brewing process efficiency while reducing the footprint of the brewing equipment. The device contains a coil made from 3/8” soft copper tubing. The coil is inserted into a housing which is constructed of two 22-gauge stainless steel cylinders and a layer of ceramic insulation. Attached to the inlet and outlet of the coil are monitoring and control devices. On the inlet is a water flow meter which allows the user to monitor …

Directional Rope Capture Device, Seaver Philipp

All Undergraduate Projects

The current market for rope capture devices shows a trend of using toothed devices as the method of creating a rope capture system. These systems are effective for a variety of applications but in any scenario in which a high load is encountered there is a large amount of damage done by the teeth to the rope. The objective of this project was to create a rope capture device that did not utilize teeth in order to create a safer loading condition on the rope. The method used for this project was application of equiangular spirals, this is the same …

Portable Snow-Bike, Tiago Sousa

All Undergraduate Projects

The world of extreme sports and more specifically the world of snow sports is changing by the minute. At the forefront of these new changes is the snow bike. The bike allows you to ride the mountain like you were riding a mountain-bike on skies, but it comes with challenges. The biggest of them being portability. The bike is restricted to certain types of lifts within the mountain and that restricts the user of its potential. This report will show that it is possible to “fold” both the frame and the handlebars to make the bike portable and therefore opening …

Pin Router Duplicator Base, Matthew Tebo

All Undergraduate Projects

The idea for the following project came from the Lean Manufacturing class that is offered at Central Washington University. In this class the manufacturing processes is demonstrated through the production of guitar kits. A problem with the class is that the CNC machine gets backed up causing a bottleneck in the production line. The solution to this problem was to make a pin router duplicator. A pin router duplicator is a device that allows the operator to trace a finished part with a pin while a router mimics its movements, cutting a new part. The component that is looked into …