Mechanical Engineering Senior Capstone Projects
- Cleaning system for silicon wafer polisher
- Electric-powered port cleaner for recovery boilers
- Palette System for Production of IC Test Equipment
- Paper Human Powered Vechicle Competition
- Baseball bat testing apparatus
- Mini-Baja Off-Road Vechicle Competition
- Braking system for ship-loading of fiber optic repeaters
- Flow bench for testing electronic enclosures
- Active Fan Control for electronic test equipment
Sponsor
Wacker Siltronics
Portland, OR
Description
Wafer polishing is an important step in the fabrication of single crystal
silicon wafers that form the substrate of most semiconductor electronic
devices. During the polishing process, a large pad rotates over several
wafers in an abrasive slurry. Over time the pads develop a build-up that
must be cleaned, or the pads are discarded.
The goal of this project is develop a device to clean the pads without
needing to remove them from the polishing machine. The cleaning cycle
must be compatible with current operation and control of the polishing
machine. The cleaning system must be compatible with the clean-room
environment if the polishing machine, and it must not spray water or
other solvents into the work area. The system should be fully automatic
with a control system that integrates with the current polishing machine.
Advisor
PSU Faculty: Far Etesami
Industry Contact: Jim Mullins
Student Team
Jeremy Way
Danny Payne
Matt Cameron
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Sponsor
Anthony Ross, Co.
Beaverton, OR
Description
Anthony Ross Company designs and manufactures products for boilers used
in the wood products industry. The main goal of the project is to produce
a design for an electric
automatic port cleaner that is at least equal to or better than our current
pneumatic model in the areas of cost, reliability, functionality and maintenance.
Our current design uses compressed air (80psi) to provide 1000 lb force
to clean air ports on a recovery boiler. We customize each product to the
specific boiler dimensions (port size and spacing, windbox depth and angle)
they are to be installed on. Our indexing motion allows us to punch out
the smelt (clean the port) with one stroke, then index to another angle
of attack as it retracts, and repeat. The average port size is 2 inches wide
and 10 inches tall, which translates to about 10-15 strokes in order to clean
the port from top to bottom. We group the number of ports to be cleaned
by each unit depending on the boiler size and type. The most common grouping
is what we call the 4-rod. This configuration uses the cylinder force to
clean four ports at a time.
An average boiler has about 100 total primary
air ports (25 per wall), which is then cleaned by our units in a sequential
counterclockwise motion around the boiler (24 hours a day). With a ten minute
wait period in between each cycle the units stroke on average 5.3 million
times per year.
Advisors
PSU Faculty: Far Etesami
Industry Contact: Dan Higgins
Student Team
Ian Hubbird
Brian Woebke
Ben Rasmussen
Dave Williams
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Sponsor
Credence, Corp.
Portland, OR
Description
Credence makes equipment to test IC's. The equipment is designed and
manufactured in Portland. They will be moving to a new facility in may, which
provides an opportunity to redesign plant flow of the assembly process, with
possible improvements in testing of their equipment during its manufacture. They
are also interested in improving the shipping package. All three projects are
related.
Advisors
PSU Faculty: Herm Migliore
Industry Contact: Rod Jones
Student Team
Joe Fontenot
Kevin Lucas
Darren Marti
Jody Clayburn
Allen Kelly
Rudolph Jones
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Description
The human powered vehicle engineering competition that will be held this spring
(April 1999) at Eastern Washington University. The competition has a catch
though, 90 percent of the vehicle (by weight) must be constructed from paper
products.
This will be the competition's third year and we are expecting a good turnout
from regional colleges.
More information on the rules and nature of the contest is
available at
http://www.technology.ewu.edu./hppv/main.htm
Advisors
PSU Faculty: Dan Jones
Industry Contact: Keith Turpin, Manufacturing Engineer, Boeing
Student Team
Gregg Jacobsen
Devin Bailly
Hieu Trinh
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Sponsor
DeMarini Sports
Beaverton, OR
Description
DeMarini Sports manufactures high performance aluminum bats for softball and
hardball. All bats must meet saftey standards which are determined by an ASTM
test procedure. The test requires that the bats are struck by a ball travelling
at a specified speed and with no spin. The ball must hit a precisely defined
location on the barrel of the bat.
The design problem is to develop a machine or system to propel a ball at a bat
with carefully controlled speed, location, and spin.
Advisors
PSU Faculty: Dave Turcic
Industry Contact:
Student Team
Mike Whalen
Nick Wusz
Dean Crowe
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Description
SAE contest to design, build and race one-person dune buggy
powered by lawn mower engine.
Advisors
PSU Faculty: Dave Turcic
Industry Contact:
Student Team
Dave Fisher
Rick Salve
Ethan Schoonover
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Sponsor
Alcatel, Inc.
Portland, OR
Description
Underwater repeaters for fiber optic transmission lines are loaded aboard
ships at the Portland manufacturing facility of Alcatel, Inc. The repeaters
have a value of approximately one million US dollars. Damage to the repeaters
as they are loading is costly because of the value of the repeaters and becuase
of the lost productivity caused by any delay in the loading procedure.
The current ship-loading procedure requires several workers to supervise and
control the descent of the loader from the manufacturing plant to the ship
as the repeaters move down a long ramp. A winch is used as a brake during
this process. The winch does not allow the speed of the repeater to be easily
controlled.
The goal of this project is to develop a new braking system for the repeaters.
The braking system must be safe (for both operators and repeaters), it should
allow a smooth, controlled descent down the loading ramp, and it should require
only one operator.
Advisors
PSU Faculty: Gerald Recktenwald
Industry Contact: Derrick Lang
Student Team
Brock Inman
Ben Mergen
Joe Schaan
Mike Smith
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Sponsor
InFocus, Inc
Tigard, OR
Description
Design, build and test a flow bench for use in the development of LCD
projectors.
The flow bench is to allow characterization of electronic enclosures
having air flow rates of 10 to 100 CFM. Overall system pressure drop
(for the device under test) will be up to 2 inches of water.
The flow bench is to also
allow for measurement of loss coefficients in grills and louvres for
approach velocities in the range 0.5 to 3 m/s.
The flow bench is to comply with existing AMSE/ANSI/AMCA standards
for fan testing. Cost of materials, including the blower, and
instrumentation is not to exceed $1000.
Advisors
PSU Faculty: Gerald Recktenwald
Industry Contact: Clark Wilson, Senior Project Engineer, InFocus
Student Team
Tim Landolt
Mike Ma
Khanh Nguyen
Jodi Wright
Outcomes
A flow bench meeting the specification of InFocus engineers was designed.
Two flow benches were constructed. One is in use at InFocus. The other
is in use in the Thermal Management Laboratory of the PSU Mechanical
Engineering Department.
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Sponsor
Tektronix, Inc
Measurement Business Division
Beaverton, OR
Description
Design, build and test a fan control system for use electronic
test equipment, e.g. oscilloscopes. The control system will use the
minimum fan speed to meet the cooling requirements of the electronics.
A maximum of two sensing elements are to be used to detect temperature.
Though the goal is to keep critical integrated circuits below a
specified temperature, the sensing elements cannot be directly
attached to these ICs.
The project involves first the design and construction of a system
mock-up to be used in subsequent tests. The system mock-up will
have the rough dimensions of an oscilloscope. Inside the mock-up is
a single printed circuit board holding four mock ICs that dissipate
40 Watts each. Once the mock-up is constructed, the active fan control
system will maintain a maximum temperature of 50 C on each simulated
device. The control system is to be implemented in software via LabView.
Advisors
PSU Faculty: Gerald Recktenwald
Industry Contact: Chris Coleman, Tektronix
Student Team
Alin Ifrim
Ahmad Lubis
Greg Osborne
John Toman
Outcomes
A mock system designed by the student team was built out of sheet metal in
the Tektronix model shop. To simulate high power electronic components, four
40 W heaters were constructed by attaching power resisters to Aluminum heat
sinks. The sheet metal enclosure was designed to cool the ``chips'' by a
combination of cross-flow and jet impingement.
Several candidate control systems were designed and implemented in LabView.
The most successful system used an ad-hoc strategy that related fan speed to
sensor temperature via a look-up table. This system worked best when the
temperature sensors were directly attached to the ``chips''.
A separate set of tests were conducted to determine the relationship between
measured ``chip'' temperature and air temperature upstream of the fan. (The
system was negatively pressured, so the fan was downstream of the heated chips.)
The strength of the correlation between the temperature sensor upstream of
the fan and the temperature of the chips was found to be strongly dependent
on the location of the fan temperature sensor. Due to this weak coupling,
no production-quality fan control system was achieved. The results of this
study indicate that active fan control is possible, but that placement of
the temperature sensor used to control fan speed is critical.
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