Students: Matthew Stone, Hunter Gebert, Jeremiah Pauler, Paul Carey
Advisor: Dr. Mizanoor Rahman
With the rapid advancements in technology, many laptops are starting to become powerful enough to run “heavy” (i.e., consumes a lot of resources and memory) software such as ANSYS and SolidWorks. Additionally, many colleges undergraduate programs are starting to adopt these softwares into the education, requiring college students to start investing into these laptops. These laptops still have a major issue, especially when compared to PC or desktop laptops: the limited ability to cool down its motherboard. Our product, CyberChill, aims to alleviate this issue while helping improve the user’s posture and increase the laptop’s life. CyberChill is a computer support system that acts as a stand which attaches to the base of the laptop. The stand is designed to raise the laptop up at an angle (which is adjustable) to keep the fans off any surface and allow more airflow and heat transfer to occur. Additionally, CyberChill comes with its own fans that allows for even more cooling to occur if needed. Keeping the motherboard and the other various circuitry from overheating helps increase the life of these parts as many fail from being overheated too much or too long. The material used for CyberChill is still being determined, as it must be a material that can be 3D printed for easy manufacturing process while having a high creep resistance and have a high thermal conductivity. This material should not be metallic and instead be made with plastics to lower the cost and avoid any buildup of charge in the support system. The design is performed in SolidWorks and fabricated using 3D printing. A comprehensive evaluation method is used to evaluate the design and the prototype.