The latest crop of senior engineering projects from soon-to-be-graduates at
Lake Superior State University is, as usual, impressive.
From a commercial-ship-sized scanner to innovations in solar panels, the LSSU senior teams are presenting their final design projects to the school, their families and the public this week.
Typically, the senior projects are done in collaboration with client companies, who enlist the students to solve engineering problems, and, more often than not, hire the students after graduation to continue the work.
"All of our senior engineering students complete a challenging design project before graduating," says David Finley, dean of LSSU's College of Business, Engineering and Economic Development. "Teams combine technical and general education into a project that is put to work in industry."
The projects include timeline, monetary and management plans, as well as paperwork, teamwork, logistics, design reviews, development and production issues, and even purchasing. It's hard to get much more real-world, hands-on training than that.
The five projects being presented this year include a work cell showcasing robotic automation and integration technologies for academic and industrial audiences. The work cell can operate a vending machine and draw an elementary portrait of a person. Another team redesigned, remanufactured and tested a previous team's racing vehicle to compete in the SAE Baja Mid-West Competition in June, while a third designed a hose reel kit for forklifts, for client Superior Fabrications of Kinross.
The team working on a ship scanner came up with a process for efficiently planning maintenance procedures on large commercial ships using four scanning software packages, in collaboration with client EOS Solutions Corporation of downstate Rochester. They tested it out on the Valley Camp Museum Ship in Sault Ste. Marie. And finally, a solar-focused team used client 3M's Brand Cool Mirror Film to update standard solar panels to increase solar energy concentration. That allows a solar energy system to use fewer panels to produce the same amount of energy, making the system weigh less and cost less.
Writer: Sam Eggleston
Source: David Finley, Lake Superior State University
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