scholarly journals ENGCON: A PRE-CAPSTONE ENGINEERING DESIGN CONVENTION

Author(s):  
Chris Rennick ◽  
Eugene Li

The capstone design project is ubiquitous in engineering programs worldwide, and is seen by students as the single most important activity in their undergraduate careers. Staff and faculty at the University of Waterloo identified three issues with the current capstone process: students are unaware of industrial suppliers, they lack multi-disciplinary exposure, and they often struggle to identify "good" needs for their projects. The Engineering IDEAs Clinic, with support from instructors and staff from across Engineering, developed a conference for students to address these issues. EngCon – aimed at students in third/fourth year – brought students together with their peers from other programs, instructors from across the Faculty, and representatives from suppliers (both external industry, and internal support units) with the goal of improving their capstone projects. This paper presents the design and implementation of EngCon in both 2017 and 2018 with lessons learned from offering a large coordinated set of workshops aimed at students as they enter their capstone design projects.  

Author(s):  
Chris K. Mechefske ◽  
Brian W. Surgenor ◽  
John Pelow ◽  
Urs P. Wyss

As with most engineering schools, the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Queen’s University in Kingston, has a final year capstone design course. Since 1998, capstone projects have involved teams of students working on industry-based problems. This paper summarizes the experience of current and past course coordinators with the university-industry component, comments on how the Conceiv Design Implement Operate (CDIO) elements of the design cycle are handled, and discusses the implications of the two term structure of the course. The first term course MECH 460 Team Project – Conceive and Design is mandatory for all students. The second term course MECH 462 Team Project – Implement and Operate is optional.


Author(s):  
Varun Rawal ◽  
Steven T O’Shields ◽  
Joshua D Summers

The goal of this research is to understand, explore, and align the motivation and value that industry gains from sponsoring senior level mechanical engineering capstone design projects at Clemson University. This research compares the expected values of capstone projects from the perspectives of both the sponsoring companies and university faculty. If faculty understand the expected value from the sponsor, faculty could more effectively solicit and scope sponsor-based projects. Interviewing was used as the data collection method to explore faculty and company sponsor perceptions regarding the capstone design program. Interview results are linked and evaluated to extract thematic patterns in the responses. Conclusions of this work show that faculty anticipate companies continue to sponsor projects if the final products generated by the student teams are beneficial to the company. Companies tend to gain value from sponsoring capstone by providing low priority projects to garner solutions with minimal investment. Further, the realized benefit of the projects for the sponsoring companies depends on the structuring of the program, the proximity of the university, and the relationship between the company and university.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jheng-Wun Su ◽  
Zhengwei Nie ◽  
Jiamin Wang ◽  
Yuyi Lin

Author(s):  
Patrick Dumond ◽  
Eric Lanteigne

Traditionally, mechanical engineering capstone courses focused on teaching students the application of fundamental engineering theory to complex mechanical designs. Recently, there has been a transition towards experiential learning initiatives, such as prototyping, in engineering design. This paper looks at the relationship between the mechanical engineering design capstone course and a course in product design and development, which provides students with the opportunity to build prototypes of their designs, at the University of Ottawa. The importance of the traditional capstone course is considered and the implications of implementing these designs are examined. Many capstone design projects would require extensive work so that they could be implemented. A large hurdle appears to exist between analytical design and design implementation, and the term time constraints limit the complexity of designs intended for prototyping. In fact, students require many design iterations before they can build full-scale functional prototypes of their design. Therefore, we have observed that simple products work best for teaching design implementation.


Author(s):  
Nathan L. Eng ◽  
Rob H. Bracewell ◽  
P. John Clarkson

Engineering design thinking combines concepts from heterogeneous sources like personal experience, colleagues, digital and hardcopy media. Despite this challenge, modes of thinking across levels of abstraction through multi-dimensional (spatial) representations are widely neglected in digital support systems. This paper aims to summarize lessons learned through years of experience with software tools that augment this visio-spatial conceptual thinking. This work cuts across disciplines to provide a needed, coherent starting point for other researchers to examine complex outstanding issues on a class of promising support tools which have yet to gain widespread popularity. Three studies are used to provide specific examples across design phases, from conceptual design to embodiment. Each study also focuses on an exemplar of diagrammatic software: the University of Cambridge Design Rationale editor (DRed), the Institute for Human Machine Cognition’s (IHMC) CmapTools and the Open University’s Compendium hypermedia tool. This synthesis reiterates how hypermedia diagrams provide many unique, valuable functions while indicating important practical boundaries and limitations. Future research proposed includes: a need to build more diagrammatic literacy into engineering practice, the need for more detailed studies with experts in industry and specific directions for refining the hypermedia diagram software interfaces.


Author(s):  
Douglas V. Gallagher ◽  
Ronald A. L. Rorrer

At the University Colorado Denver, a manufacturing process design course was specifically created to raise the level of the as constructed senior design projects in the department. The manufacturing process design course creates a feed forward loop into the senior design course, while the senior design course generates a feedback loop into the process design course. Every student and student project has the opportunity to utilize CNC mills and lathes where appropriate. Specific emphasis is placed upon the interfaces from solid models to CAM models and subsequently the interface from CAM models to the machine tool. Often the construction of many senior design projects approaches the level of blacksmithing due to time constraints and lack of fabrication background. Obviously, most engineering students have neither the time nor the ability to become expert fabricators. However, the wide incorporation of CNC machining in the program allows, an opportunity to not only raise the quality of their prototypes, but also to immerse in the hands on experience of living with the ramifications of their own design decisions in manufacturing. Additionally, some of the art of fabrication is turned into the science of fabrication. The focus of this paper will be primarily on examining the effect of formal incorporation of the manufacturing process in the capstone design course.


Author(s):  
Barry Hyman ◽  
Sanjeev Khanna ◽  
Yuyi Lin ◽  
Jim Borgford-Parnell

This paper describes an NSF funded project in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) Department at the University of Missouri. A primary goal of this project is to systematically increase project-based learning (PBL) experiences throughout the MAE curriculum. To accomplish this goal, recent capstone design projects that need further refinements serve as the basis for PBL activities throughout the MAE curriculum. A major tool for facilitating these refinement efforts is a new senior/graduate Design Management course in which each student in this course learns how to plan and manage design projects. These students then implement their learning by serving as project team managers in the courses in which the refinement activities are being conducted. This paper provides a detailed case study of five refinements to one capstone design that took place in four different MAE courses during the Spring 2011 semester. The paper describes a Fall 2009 capstone project that consisted of designing a portable wood chipper. The student design was very promising, leading to a chipper with significantly greater chipping capacity than commercially available chippers of the same size and weight. However, several faculty members reviewed the results and identified additional opportunities for refining the design. This paper describes activities during Spring 2011 when students in four different MAE courses developed refinements to the original design. The roles of the Design Management students in these activities are discussed. The paper also includes a discussion of the methods and findings of the formative assessment process, including interviews with, and surveys of, faculty and students.


Author(s):  
Ralph O. Buchal

Society needs innovators to solve pressing design problems, and emerging technologies drive innovation. The Integrated Engineering Program offered at the University of Western Ontario develops engineering innovators by offering an interdisciplinary engineering education with emphasis on emerging technologies and engineering design. The program incorporates design in every year, and offers students the unique opportunity to participate in large multi-year design projects as part of their formal engineering education. A survey shows that students rate these features of the program important and valuable contributors toward their career goals.


Author(s):  
Pouyan Jazayeri ◽  
William (Bill) Rosehard ◽  
David Westwick

This paper presents some of the experiences gained from the interdisciplinary design course offered at the university of Calgary in the 2004-2005 academic year. It also provides a few proposals and recommendations to improve the course (or similar versions) in the future. The components of the course—lecture content, group structure, design projects, and general course structure—are analyzed and some of the challenges—equal contribution from members, scheduling, grading, and more— are described in this paper. The approaches used in overcoming these problems, along with further suggestions, are also detailed.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document