Category: Design

Students: Om Patel, Robert Lauer, David O’Connell, David McKenney, Jacob Onda

Advisor: Dr. Mizanoor Rahman

For our project, we conceptualized, sketched, 3D modeled and manufactured a mechanical gripper for a variety of applications. Our design was made to be simple, lightweight, and relatively easy to manufacture. Throughout our design process, we hit multiple roadblocks and had to revise certain aspects of our gripper to be able to move forward. Our poster presents the design and manufacturing process from start to finish and provides special details about the problems that we faced and how we overcame them. For the design process description, we explain how we used SOLIDWORKS to convert a pencil sketch into fully operable assembly, mentioning some of the designs that we had to adjust or change to make the product function. When describing the manufacturing process, we address some of the many issues we faced when converting a digital assembly to a tangible product. Some of these issues include the material being weaker than we initially thought, and having issues with the clearances that our 3D printers can handle. Some unique features of our product is the circular shape of the base. This design makes it much more comfortable to use when compared to a basic square design. The hollow insides also allow us to put the control arms inside the device so there are no moving parts on the outside other than the jaws themselves. Our poster ends with an overall evaluation of our product prototype, including results from experiments we conducted. These experiments evaluated the overall strength, feel and durability of the gripper.

Keywords: Gripper, mechanical design, materials, manufacture, robot

Students: Matthew Brown, Zackery Gray, Peter Macdonough, Randall Percival, Amanda Winter

Advisor: Dr. Mizanoor Rahman

Robotic hands, called grippers, have been increasingly used in the manufacturing industry in the past few decades for automation and precision. In recent years, entire factories have been constructed on the basis of robotic automation with hundreds, even thousands, of robotic arms to do various repetitive tasks. In every case, robotic grippers are used to handle numerous products, materials, and other objects throughout their work. For this reason, we set out to develop a relatively small robotic gripper (about six inches long) that can be mass-produced using 3D-printing technology. A series of parameters and design goals were attributed to this product and as a group, we narrowed down the parameters to a set of five main criteria, compact, modular, safe, smooth/efficient, and manufacturable. Upon arriving at these certain design conditions, the model of the gripper could be crafted, tested, printed, and retested. Our first step was to draw conceptual systems that could prove to be the most effective option at which point the excavator type was selected. The main reason behind this choice stemmed from the design’s ability to have more than two fingers which satisfied the modular criteria. In addition, the product fits approximately in a 7–8-inch space which satisfies the compact criteria due to the small frame. Furthermore, the products have strong manufacturable value due to the compact finger and frame designs and can be mass-produced via 3D printing. The methods, the resultant 3D-printed robotic gripper, and the performance of the product prototype were evaluated, and satisfactory results were obtained.

Keywords: Design, manufacturing, 3D-Printing, grip strength, PLA

First Place Design Category

Students: Antonio Pugliese, Michael Waltman, Garrett Walsh

Advisor: Dr. Mizanoor Rahman

This project focuses on designing and developing a sensor-based game to promote recycling aluminum cans. The main motivation for this project is environmental health; this project looks to reduce the number of aluminum cans that end up in public waste bins and have them thrown in the recycling bin instead. This will be achieved by providing a fun and competitive experience to people with the device designed in this project.

The first of two components is a can-crushing device purchased from the market. With this simple device, the user places an aluminum can on a platform and pulls a lever to crush the can into a disk. The second component is a pegboard inspired by the game “Plinko” seen on “The Price is Right” game show. The crushed can will act as the disk and will fall down the board through one of six scoring slots into the recycling bin. This game utilizes gravity, infrared sensors, and an LCD display screen in tandem with an Arduino microcontroller so once the can is crushed, this process becomes hands-free.

This experience will provide fun sights, a satisfying experience for a user when recycling cans, and even encourage this through friendly competition when two or more friends have cans to recycle. It may even encourage someone to save their can when no recycling bins are available so they can use it to play the game, which would save even more cans from a landfill, increasing awareness for environmental health in the long run.

Students: Alek Brown, Logan Hyler, Dalton Buchman, Kylen Moni, Bryan Lantzy, Jarod Kiraly

Advisor: Dr. Mizanoor Rahman

Grippers are devices that enable robots to pick up and hold objects. It is a part of a robot, but it is itself a mechanical component. The goal of the project is to design, manufacture, and evaluate a robot gripper with a novel gripping mechanism using 3D printing technology. Motion is usually done with a motor, but for this project we will have a mechanism to move the grippers manually. The design must prioritize various factors such as weight, compactness, strength, cost, and manufacturability. We created the design in SolidWorks and performed strain and stress analysis with these criteria in mind.

If a motor is used, the motor would spin a threaded bolt where the two gripping hands are connected. The motor would spin until it is fitted onto the object tightly, then it will stop rotating, and the threads will help the grippers lock onto the object. In this design, we manually spin the threaded bolt using the star-designed crank at one end of the device. Only the hand to the left on the design above moves while the one on the right stays fixed. The bolt rotating causes the hand on the left to move depending on the direction of rotation. The guide rails are used to keep the plate from rotating when the threads are turned and have an even retrieval. The SolidWorks model was 3D printed and the prototype was evaluated experimentally.

Keywords: Robot, gripper, design, 3D printing, evaluation

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.

Second Place Design Category

Students: Kris Boswell, James Labelle, Ethan Marti, Eric Rine

Advisor: Dr. Mizanoor Rahman

Individuals , particularly those with physical injuries or accumulated wear and tear from years of work, face challenges when changing tires on vehicles. The objective was to develop a functional proof-of-concept prototype that effectively demonstrates the use of the innovative tool or robot designed for assisting people when changing tires on vehicles.

To achieve the objective of developing a tire-changing robot, several key mechanisms and components were researched and developed for integration into the design. This includes a lead screw activated scissor lift mechanism to enable vertical movement. This scissor lift allows the robot to adjust its height, ensuring that it can reach and align with various vehicle types and tire sizes. A belt and pulley system, coupled with a motor, is employed to facilitate the rotation of rollers and the tire itself. A joystick interface is integrated into the system, allowing users to intuitively control the rotation of the tire. The core of the robot’s control system is based on Arduino microcontrollers. Detailed Solidworks schematics were created to illustrate the design and structure of the robot and its individual components, and a proof-of-concept model was constructed to show the product’s functionality. The group developed a dynamic model for the robot and analyzed the dynamic characteristics of the robot design and evaluated the performance of the physical prototype. The results showed satisfactory dynamic characteristics and performance of the prototype.

Keywords: Automobiles, tire replacement, tire alignment robot, electromechanical design, dynamic system, performance evaluation