Incorporating Engineering Challenges into Capstone Design and Senior Project Courses

Abstract

The Engineering & Design Department of Eastern Washington University (EWU) recently added a Mechanical Engineering (ME) degree to the existing Mechanical Engineering Technology (MET) program. The ME program is more theoretical and requires more advanced mathematics where the MET program is more hands-on with mathematics requirements up to Calculus II. However, the programs are taught side-by-side and complement each other. When we developed the ME program we wanted to maintain as much of the strong hands-on aspect of MET program as possible. Therefore, we teach the required Capstone Design and Senior project courses with a mix of ME and MET students. Prior to creating the ME program, we taught these courses to a mixture of MET, Applied Technology, and Manufacturing option students where the emphasis was given to product development and completion of a small production run. With the development of the new ME program, we decided to teach these classes with a combination of ME and MET students and take advantage of the strong research and development approach. We designed the stronger R&D approach to expose the MET students to applications of the theories taught to the ME students. On the other hand, we expose the ME students to the hands-on shop skills involved in prototype development taught to the MET students. We have taught these courses four times with the new R&D focus, and would like to present our findings and plans. Literature Review of Capstone ProjectsYousuf and Mustafa [1] at Savannah State University conducted a capstone project that dealt with Electronic Name Tag (ENT) system that can be used for conferences, visitors' badges, and other purposes. The basic project requirement was to design and build an ENT system using the PIC16C57 microcontroller. The main objective of the project was to familiarize students with Embedded Systems, which is a combination of computer hardware and software, and additional mechanical and electronic parts. Students were required to design the system to perform a dedicated function. The 3D modeling software called Autodesk Inventor was used to design and assemble the case for the ENT system. Students provided the formal presentation with the opportunity to conduct tests with a Stamp Microcontroller, PBASIC compiler and other interfacing devices. This capstone project was implemented within one semester in the Department of Engineering Technology in Spring 2012 for the Civil and Electronics Engineering Technology majors. This project served as a reference for providing students with challenging and exciting hardware and software design experiences that are involved with various fields of 3D modeling, electrical, and physical layout design concept. It provided opportunity for both faculty and students to work in an application oriented environment.

Expansion of the ME/MET Capstone Course from One to Two Quarters

“…The enthusiasm of the two groups of students allowed us to do a pilot run for a two quarter Capstone course before we could make the official change. In addition, our previous experience has shown that when working with industry-sponsored projects over one quarter there are many additional challenges including not having enough time for shipping parts or obtaining technical assistance 2,11 . Switching to two quarters will permit enough time to obtain the necessary parts and support.…”

“…The same was done after the creation of the ME program and in addition the students were encouraged to seek industry sponsored projects. While some projects were successful, others were not as much 2 . The main challenge encountered was the lack of time, ten weeks seems to be short especially when one takes into account the response time from the company or sponsor and the time needed to ship or obtain necessary parts or services.…”