Engineering Projects Expo is back and in person! We invite you to spend some time getting to know this year's Mechanical Engineering Senior Designprojects and teams.
Engineering Projects Expocelebrates the hard work and many achievements of more than200 studentsas they close out their undergraduatecareers.Since August 2021, these students have been working through the design process from start to finishand have engineered solutions to real-world problems.
ֲý completing industry-sponsored projects were presented withchallenges of relevance to their clients from a variety of specialties. Those in the Engineering for Social Innovation section of Senior Design developed entrepreneurial productsbased onuser needs.
Teams were mentored and supported by a dedicated group of faculty directors andstudent program assistants, as well as fabrication, administrative, and laboratory staff over the course of the academic year.Most projects required students to develop skills across disciplines with somemulti-disciplinary teams bringing together student expertise in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering,and computer science.
Please explore projects below to learn more about this year's teams, their designsand the positive impact theseengineers aremaking. Thank you for your support of our program and students.Ifyou would like to learn moreabout the program or sponsoring a project, please visitDesign Center Colorado.
33
design
projects
243
engineering
students
1,600+
student hours
per project
26
dedicated
directors
2022 Senior Design Projects
All
Team 01: Machine Chip Disposal System
Accu-Precision is a local manufacturer whose daily machining operations yield hundreds of pounds of metal chips that are collected for recycling. This cumbersome task requires multiple machinists to lift and tip bins into large dumpsters by hand. We have created a machine that automates these actions to reduce handling time and physical strain, allowing machinists to work safely and efficiently.
Sponsored by Accu-Precision
Team 02: Deformable surgical needle
The small port diameter used in minimally invasive pediatric operations negatively impacts the size of needle profiles used in surgery. Our team collaborated with Children’s Hospital to design a novel suturing needle and an associated introducer that straightens the needle upon entering and exiting the body, allowing use of small ports for better surgical outcomes without loss of functionality.
Sponsored by Children's Hospital Colorado
Team 03: Novel In Vivo Camera System to Assess Obstructive Sleep Apnea
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a medical condition where a collapse of the upper airway occurs during sleep in people of all ages. Current diagnosis methods are ineffective in simulating natural sleep to capture the location and pattern of obstructions. The goal of Team 3’s project is to develop a new method to measure sites and severity of the airway obstruction occurring during natural sleep.
Sponsored by Children's Hospital Colorado
Team 04: Modular filler/extractor
Festo automates laboratory and industrial processes to expedite testing and manufacturing. Our team designed a device that automatically dispenses combinations of fluids with the push of a button. Using duckbill valves and a linear actuator, our device succeeds in proving duckbills are viable for fluid applications. Our team designed this because we wanted to learn more about duckbill mechanisms.
Sponsored by Festo
Team 05: Flexible EOD Wire Attack Tool
The Attack Tool is designed to enhance the safety and versatility of EOD operators while working in the field. The improved tool introduces a rack and pinion gear system allowing for a 90° bend when inserted through a 1.5” diameter hole, generating a hemispherical range of attack. The tool can generate multiple cuts through 14 gauge wire via a pneumatic system, actuated by the existing tool handle
Sponsored by Los Alamos National Laboratory
Team 06: Lighted Electrosurgical Pencil
Medtronic produces electrosurgical pencils that cut and coagulate using high frequency electricity. Our team redesigned their current electrosurgical pencil (the SEP 50XX) to include a ring light, placed at the working end of the pencil, to increase visibility of the surgical field. This redesign also allows for more efficient smoke evacuation and improved overall pencil ergonomics.
Sponsored by Medtronic
Team 07: A Soft Robot for Surgical Interventions
During a bronchoscopy, a needle is passed through the airway to collect tissue samples for cancer diagnoses. Soft robots are relatively novel, yet exemplary in their adaptability in unpredictable environments and increased safety in human-robot interactions. By replacing the distal end of a catheter with a soft robot, we aim to make bronchoscopies safer for patients and easier for physicians.
Sponsored by Medtronic
Team 08: Dry Land Hockey Sled
Sled hockey is an adaptive sport for people with a variety of disabilities played as an alternative to hockey. Our goal was to create a modular attachment that could mimic similar movements off-the-ice for practice purposes. With the help of computer aided design and a fully functioning machine shop, our team was able to create a fun to use, well representative model for the sport.
Sponsored by Quality of Life Plus (QL+)
Team 09: Project Index
Our team partnered with Quality of Life Plus to create a product that actively improves the life of our client, a Navy veteran. He sustained injuries resulting in the loss of approximately 1⁄2 of an inch past the center knuckle of his right index finger. We created a body driven prosthetic finger with a linkage mechanism to help our client bend his finger so he can more easily perform tasks.
Sponsored by Quality of Life Plus (QL+)
Team 10: Deployable Baffle and Lens Alignment System
Sandia National Laboratories sponsored a project to create a new design for an optical lens housing and baffle deployment mechanism. Our prototype involves a carbon fiber truss linked via 3D printed connectors and a lead screw deployment system. This unique design fits in a cubic foot envelope and is under 5 pounds, optimizing future satellites while still surviving a launch and space environment.
Sponsored by Sandia National Laboratories
Team 11: Space-based optical alignment and deployable baffle
Space baffles are utilized to block stray sunlight that otherwise degrades the image quality of cameras in orbit. Our team partnered with Sandia National Laboratories to help reduce the mass and mechanical envelope of an optical space baffle. The group created a tape measure deployed, telescoping baffle that can maintain lens alignment at thermal extremes and survive a launch environment.
Sponsored by Sandia National Laboratories
Team 12: Cessna Citation CJ4 Seat Mount
Safety and passenger experience are top priorities in the commercial aerospace industry. With Textron Aviation, our team developed new methods of attaching both the stationary and tracking seats in the Citation CJ4 Gen2 to the plane floor. Our seat assembly is designed to reduce free play in the attachment mechanism to improve the passenger’s feeling of security to match the safety of the design.
Sponsored by Textron Aviation
Team 13: Autonomous device/system for ground-based Warfighter protection, supply and/or evacuation
This year’s ARO team demonstrated an autonomous Warfighter protection system that acts as a squad member, defensively positioning itself and deploying protective shields. The team integrated two existing subsystems and added visual and voice commands, GPS navigation, and object detection. The system shall be a force multiplier, assuring our Warfighters that continuous protection is close at hand.
Sponsored by the United States Army Research Office
Team 14: SAE Baja Off-Road Vehicle Design
SAE International hosts a collegiate level Baja competition to design, build, and race single-seat, off-road vehicles that can withstand the punishment of rough terrain. The 2022 CU Boulder team has designed a new vehicle focused on optimizing component integration, thus decreasing weight and improving performance. This led to building a new transfer case, new chassis, and new suspension package.
Sponsored by Stolle Machinery
Team 15: GmAPD (Geiger-mode Avalanche Photodiode) Thermal Management Study
Team 15 partnered with Ball Aerospace Tactical Solutions to create a compact active cooling system that removes 23W of heat against a 0 degree temperature gradient. The system must also prevent damage by minimizing forces applied to the advanced sensor package in a defense application. Backed by rigorous analysis and testing, our initial product design exceeds all design requirements.
Sponsored by Ball Aerospace, Tactical Solutions
Team 16: SMART CubeS - System of Magnetically Aligned And Reconfigurable Tiny Cube Satellites
Current space technologies are constrained to strict volumetric limits, resulting in single-mission system architectures. SMARTCubeS introduces unparalleled flexibility to deployable space-structures via dynamically reconfigurable swarms of connected, modular CubeSats. Launching these swarms as compact arrays, SMARTCubeS enables the creation of more advanced and adaptable on-orbit structures.
Sponsored by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Team 17: Silicon Wafer Center-Finding Improvement
Our team worked to improve the center-finding process used in the inspection of silicon wafers. The project’s goal is to find the wafer’s center to 10-micron accuracy in under 2 seconds. The center is the origin of a coordinate grid that is used to locate defects. The test bench implements a custom algorithm and high-magnification cameras to inspect the wafer profile and log the center position.
Sponsored by KLA
Team 18: Passive Shock Switch
Passive monitoring is used to detect events or initiate systems when power is unavailable. Team 18 created a passive, normally open switch for Los Alamos National Laboratory that closes and latches when a magnet displaces sufficiently to be captured by a steel plate. The passive design requires only the energy from a shock event to close, and will not latch in normal transportation environments.
Sponsored by Los Alamos National Laboratory
Team 19: Deployable Helical Antenna
With the space industry’s push for smaller satellites, strict size constraints on hardware are needed. Our deployable spring antenna’s ability to stow at a fraction of its deployed height, survive launch and function as a powerful antenna, brings new solutions to Lockheed Martin Space. Combining the functionality of a passive deployment system and an antenna brings innovation to the industry.
Sponsored by Lockheed Martin Space
Team 20: Electrosurgical Generator Electromechanical Load
This project’s goal is to create a system that allows Medtronic to test their electrosurgical generators. Via the engineering design process, we built a lead screw actuator with an electrode arm to replicate the generator’s arcing behavior in monopolar mode (dissection and coagulation), and a variable load using a saline bath to copy the varying tissue impedance in bipolar mode (vessel sealing).
Sponsored by Medtronic
Team 21: Positioning and Clamping Mechanism for Coriolis Flow Meter Subassembly
For precision flow measurements, MicroMotion’s Coriolis Flow Meter requires a precise manufacturing process to ensure that components are aligned to fit within their calibration window. In effort to reduce post processing aspects that allow them to achieve such precision, we have developed a new structural component in addition to a new clamping process that enhances flow tube conformity.
Sponsored by Micro Motion Inc.
Team 22: NOAA ADLS-9
On behalf of NOAA, Team 22 have designed and manufactured the ADLS-9, a Doppler hemispheric LiDAR scanner for use in atmospheric data acquisition, offering increased portability, range of motion, and pointing accuracy over previous scanners. Two optical limit switches eliminate the buildup of positional uncertainty during continuous sweeps in both the azimuthal and elevational axes.
Sponsored by NOAA
Team 23: Reusable Pacemaker lead extraction device
Philips aims to improve medical devices by minimizing cost and complication. We were tasked with redesigning an existing Philips pacemaker lead extraction device with a focus on sustainability. Our design separates the device into reusable and disposable sections that can be easily disassembled, sterilized and reassembled between procedures, in order to save time, reduce waste, and minimize cost.
Sponsored by Philips
Team 24: Development of a magnetic field steering system
This magnetic field generator is capable of creating a uniform field based on input from a sensor. Using the sensor to detect ambient fields, its software and electronics architecture drives current to each coil to zero the field between the two panels. This initial system is the first step towards developing a dynamic field steering system.
Sponsored by FieldLine Inc.
Team 25: Wind Turbine Blade Tip Tracker
Knowing a wind turbine blade’s deflection is vital to engineering and validating more efficient blades. We used groundbreaking techniques in GPS systems to track the position and orientation of a blade tip moving at 190 mph. These systems, when iterated through an extensive testing approach and coupled with post processing algorithms, tracked the position accurately to the size of a tennis ball!
Sponsored by Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy
Team 26: Reinfusion Module Design for Rika
The Reinfusion Module attaches to a current Terumo BCT device, Rika, and accommodates additional blood processing functionality. This module is designed to minimize weight and downtime while maximizing ease of installation. The module accommodates existing Terumo components which are interchangeable between Rika and our module. Our proof of concept was verified through extensive testing.
Sponsored by Terumo BCT
Team 27: How to get rid-of ovality of the tubing received on the spool and before it gets on to the automation.
Terumo BCT required the removal of ovality from blood tubing within a fully-automated manufacturing process. Unacceptable tubing ovality has prevented increased production rates, and rendered a large portion of the tubing unusable. Our objective was to design and fabricate a high-speed manufacturing device that reforms the tubing through heat and mechanical manipulation before entering automation.
Sponsored by Terumo
Team 28: Collegiate Wind Competition
To learn more about the offshore wind industry, the CU Wind Team participated in the 2022 Collegiate Wind Competition where universities compete to increase excitement in renewables. The team built an offshore wind turbine prototype that optimizes weight and power production, developed a hypothetical wind farm, and engaged middle school students through a wind energy presentation.
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy
Team 40: AcoustaMed
Using a microfluidic chip developed by Dr. Ding’s laboratory at CU Boulder, AcoustaMed has developed a mechanical device that places mRNA into cells using a high frequency acoustic signal. The device is semi-autonomous, efficient and easy to use. The device can drastically speed up the process taking as little as 1% of the time used by current techniques.
Engineering for Social Innovation
Team 41: Big SUR
Over 95% of the California’s bull kelp population has died off in the past decade. This can be attributed to the 10000% increase in purple sea urchin numbers. We decided to make an underwater vacuum with custom aeration technology and size sorting capabilities. The ergonomic device has a collection rate 6x higher than any other urchin removal method & will aid divers in clearing the urchin barrens.
Engineering for Social Innovation
Team 42: Rime Systems
Rime Systems has developed a unique technology for helping keep people cool in climates with excessive heat. This product is a nylon cooling vest that users would put on in hot environments. Using thermoelectric elements, it disperses cooling across the users back to achieve a steady state heat transfer. This device is meant to be used in environments where mass cooling is scarce or ineffective.
Engineering for Social Innovation
Team 43: Peace of Mind Braking System
Delta Horizons has created a novel braking system to improve the safety of four-wheeled walkers. The design features a mechanical system that does not require conscious user input. The brakes are engaged when the walker is unloaded to keep it from rolling away from the user. During normal use, the walker can roll freely. During excess loading, the brakes again engage, creating a stable system.
Engineering for Social Innovation
Team 44: Surround Strap
Playing video games is a valuable experience that connects people around the world. It’s an important part of the upbringing of so many, so we believe it’s essential to make gaming more accessible for everyone. The Surround Strap uses haptic feedback to improve directional awareness within a video game. This gives users in the deaf and low-hearing community a more complete gaming experience.
Engineering for Social Innovation