{"id":22172,"date":"2016-04-21T15:06:13","date_gmt":"2016-04-21T15:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/?p=22172"},"modified":"2024-11-27T11:46:10","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T16:46:10","slug":"senior-design-demonstration-day-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2016\/04\/senior-design-demonstration-day-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"Senior Design Demonstration Day Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Josh Garvey<\/em><\/p>\n

Every year, engineering seniors spend the spring and fall semester at UConn designing senior projects, often working with industry partners. A partner will provide an engineering problem for a group of students with a particular interest to work on. Over 170 teams of seniors will present their work on April 29 at Gampel Pavilion starting at 1 p.m.- visitors are welcome to attend!<\/p>\n

These capstone projects bring together all aspects of their undergraduate education into a cohesive experience, allowing students the opportunity to work on real-world industry problems. This grounds their learning in a project that requires not just the technical know-how they\u2019ve spent years gaining, but also requires collaboration with teammates, making a schedule, and presenting information in a coherent manner.<\/p>\n

Industry partners are able to work with students and get first-hand impressions about these young engineers who are poised to enter the job market.<\/p>\n

UConn Engineering spoke with two teams of seniors and private sector collaborators about the experience.<\/p>\n

Kathleen Coleman, Zachary Quinn, Tori Radovic with Stanadyne Product Engineering<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"IMG_4737\"
Zachary Quinn, Tori Radovic, Kathleen Coleman hold the materials they have been testing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This team was tasked with picking a new material to use for a portion of a diesel engine- a transfer pump end cap. Quinn said that the end cap is a necessary part, where the fuel flows into the pump.\u00a0 The part in question has caused difficulty in machining and production.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the material rusts. Currently, it\u2019s steel. They also have problems machining it. There\u2019s such tight tolerances in the fuel pump that you have to be very careful, it\u2019ll affect the assembly and function of the pump,\u201d Coleman said.<\/p>\n

The team tested a number of different materials as a replacement, eventually settling on four different polymers to test. After narrowing the field to two, they made an official recommendation to Stanadyne.<\/p>\n

Keith Simpson is an industry advisor with Stanadyne who has been working with the senior team for the past year. He highlighted why his company is altering the material.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe benefits of a non-metallic material would greatly enhance our pump by reducing distortion -of a thin cross section- through heat treat and eliminate some issues relative to machining.\u00a0 One of the largest issues we have with our current material is rust, which is always a challenge, particularly from our outsourced supplier in India,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

By improving those production issues, Stanadyne could reduce the failure rate of the end cap. Simpson also mentioned that if this project goes well, Stanadyne would possibly introduce alternate material components or product lines.<\/p>\n

The process of interacting with their industry partner was another learning experience for the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the beginning, we didn’t have a lot of information to work with. That made us learn how to ask the right questions. I think that was more beneficial than them handing us everything. I think we learned a lot more that way,\u201d Radovic said.<\/p>\n

Alex Dumschott, Clement Lee, Alex Trotman with TRUMPF Inc. <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"IMG_4718\"
Alex Drumschott, Clement Lee and Alex Trotman review their prototype vacuum part.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TRUMPF, one of the largest manufacturers of fabricating equipment and industrial lasers in North America, gave the team of Alex Dumschott, Clement Lee and Alex Trotman a project to improve the performance within an existing device. They were tasked with optimizing a vacuum system within a high capacity sheet metal laser cutting machine. The laser beam creates metal dust as it cuts. That metal dust must be effectively removed to ensure a safe working environment for the machine operator, a stable cutting process and a long lifetime for the equipment. The current vacuum system design has shortcomings, which results in more suction on one end of the machine than the other.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese machines have already been built and sold and are currently in use. A part of our constraints are that everything needs to fit within the current model- there\u2019s not a lot to work with in terms of space,\u201d Trotman said.<\/p>\n

Dumschott, Lee and Trotman said that much of their time has been spent on the preparatory portion of the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the work has been identifying where the problem areas are. If we had 5 years, there\u2019s a lot we could do with the project but we have from September to April 29 to get this all done,\u201d Dumschott said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA big chunk of that is just learning the (Finite Element Analysis) software itself,\u201d Lee said, referring to the program they used to test their models and the airflow they allowed, which they weren\u2019t initially familiar with. Finite Element Analysis is a computerized method for predicting how a product reacts to real-world forces.<\/p>\n

Benedikt Buschle, a Mechanical Design Engineer with TRUMPF who worked with the team said that it\u2019s interesting watching the team adapt to a more grounded project.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s interesting to get to see them adapt. To see them go from the purely scientific world to the real world, the industry world,\u201d Buschle said.<\/p>\n

A part of that adaptation process was encouraging the students to do more hands on attempts, to make a prototype using TRUMPF\u2019s machining resources. The team made a scaled-down model to test their theories out, and were eventually able to meet the company\u2019s requirements for the project by identifying the area that caused the steepest pressure drops and redesigning with a more favorable internal geometry.<\/p>\n

Walter Kampitsch, a Product Development manager with TRUMPF, said that students go through a familiar process when they go from the education world to the industry world.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see the pattern over and over, with the first experience manufacturing things and dealing with lead time. If the students come with a reasonable time frame, they\u2019re able to get things done.\u00a0 Otherwise it\u2019s not going to happen. It\u2019s a part of the reality check they go through,\u201d Kampitsch said.<\/p>\n

Adapting to the realities of business interactions is one of the strengths of the senior design program, Trotman said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a good experience. I\u2019ve had internships before and it\u2019s pretty obvious that school and work are two different entities,\u201d Trotman said. \u201cIn class, it\u2019s often very clear what we\u2019re looking for, but this requires more out of the box thinking. It\u2019s the most application based thing we\u2019ve learned.\u00a0 We\u2019ve had to pull skills from all of our classes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every year, engineering seniors spend the spring and fall semester at UConn designing senior projects, often working with industry partners. A partner will provide an engineering problem for a group of students with a particular interest to work on. Over 170 teams of seniors will present their work on April 29 at Gampel Pavilion- visitors are welcome to attend!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":221988,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2110],"class_list":["post-22172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-25 00:23:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":221990,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22172\/revisions\/221990"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/221988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22172"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=22172"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=22172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}