Project Goal: To automate the process of preparing golf shaft tips for club assembly through the use of robotics and complementary equipment.

Sandblasting golf shaft tips in a high-volume manufacturing industrial environment is a menial task that could be improved and made less expensive through automation. Currently, shaft tip preparation involves a person unloading boxes of 50 shafts, inserting them into an automatic sandblaster and putting them back into boxes. This is time-consuming, tedious and costly.

To automate this process, the team implemented an integrated KUKA robot arm and mechanical shaft dispenser, which operate in tandem through EtherCAT technology. The robot arm is equipped with a custom shaft gripping mechanism that operates robotic fingers. A microcontroller and sensors operate the motor-driven shaft dispenser, which employs a linear actuator to push shafts of different lengths into an optimal pick-up position. A user operates the system’s program with the KUKA Robot Language on a teach pendant. Two industrial grade t-slot aluminum extrusion carts are used to mount the robot arm and shaft dispenser, as well as house the controllers for both units.

The Automated Shaft Tip Preparation project team created a fully functional system that requires minimal user interaction and optimizes the shaft preparation process so that it is consistent, efficient and a positive return on investment.

Project Goal: Design and build a market-ready walker featuring a mechanically lifting plate that the user can use to lift objects from the ground to waist height.

Patients who experience bending mobility issues may be unable to bend to pick up objects from the ground. Commercially available grab and reach devices are often difficult to use or are too flimsy to lift heavy objects for everyday household tasks.

The Tonee Lift is a patent-pending walker with a "vertical platform-type" plate that can lift various objects from the ground while the user is standing. The team created models using Arduino IDE and SolidWorks. They analyzed the design, size, weight and structural integrity for parts and subassemblies using SolidWorks. The algorithm for the lift was a hierarchy of checks from the system inputs and outputting the motor motion that controls the lift movement.

The product can lift up to25 pounds from ground level to waist height and can withstand at least 16,000 uses. The walker weighs less than 20 pounds and is rated for indoor use on solid level ground for up to 24 uses per charge.

Project Goal: Develop and design an instrument enclosure that protects and maintains operational parameters for the Infrared Channeled Spectro-Polarimeter, or IRCSP, which will be deployed on a high-altitude balloon flight.

Just recently, small and rapidly deployable instruments operating in long-wave infrared were not feasible due to costly and large cooling systems. In 2019, The University of Arizona Polarization Lab delivered the first InfraRed Channeled Spectro-Polarimeter, or IRCSP, prototype to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. It needed an enclosure that would protect the instrument and withstand conditions so that it could operate in long-wave infrared.

The enclosure can withstand harsh high-altitude conditions found in balloon flights of diminutive dimensions. It has low power consumption. In addition, the team developed an in-flight data acquisition and management system.

The IRCSP will measure the optical properties of cirrus ice clouds, which are crucial to increasing understanding of atmospheric sciences as outlined in the Earth Science Decadal Survey. It will be deployed in a future NASA balloon flight at an altitude of 39 kilometers over the southeastern United States. Testing the enclosure in this launch will reveal how it could benefit future Landsat missions.

Project Goal: Develop two commercial mosquito traps with optional data sensing and recording capabilities; and an affordable carbon dioxide dispersion system.

One million people die every year from mosquito-borne diseases. Private researchers and government agencies collect and test mosquitoes to monitor and reduce disease transmission. However, current mosquito research traps lack data-sensing capabilities and have not seen substantial upgrades to the trapping processes. These leave researchers with inefficient means of collection, as well as excessive costs from carbon dioxide production.

The team developed two prototypes: one for a professional-grade mosquito trap and another, more cost-effective, trap intended for widespread use in civilian communities. They designed the traps to include an array of data collecting sensors to automate and improve the quality of research. Additionally, many mosquito research agencies use expensive dry ice used to produce carbon dioxide to attract mosquitos. The team replaced this with a system that safely produces carbon dioxide by burning propane.

Project Goal: Design and manufacture a coaxial rotor head assembly that will integrate with a Tier-2 UAV.

Few unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, are designed with commercial or industrial applications in mind, and those that do serve a singular purpose, such as photography or lidar. The team designed and built a drivetrain for a UAV versatile enough to accept a myriad of sensors and equipment for use in commercial sectors. An additional concern was improving UAV safety. Tail rotors are one of the most common sources of failures.

The Coaxial Tier-2 UAV rotor head had to fit the constraints of a Tier-2 UAV: weigh less than 55pounds, operate at no higher than 400 feet above ground level, and fly no faster than 100miles per hour. The design used a coaxial rotor system and a continuously variable transmission that varied the speed of the top and bottom rotors, allowing the UAV to yaw without a tail rotor. Lightweight 7075 aluminum alloy and nylon carbon fiber parts were used to increase payload potential and fuel efficiency.

The coaxial rotor head assembly offers greater performance and versatility compared to competitive designs.

Project Goal: Measure the thermal conductivity of irregularly shaped geologic samples without contaminating or altering them.

Conventional thermal conductivity measurements require a sample that is cut and polished to a specific shape. The samples retrieved from the asteroid Bennu by OSIRIS-REx, once they arrive for analysis on Earth, connote altered or contaminated in any way, making it difficult to take conventional measurements. The team performed thermal conductivity experiments in a high vacuum environment to minimize sample contamination. Accordingly, they used radiation as the primary method of heat transfer to the sample.

The students designed a spherical aluminum apparatus to hold a geological sample at its center. The top hemisphere of the apparatus was exposed to heat flux, while the bottom hemisphere was cooled to a known temperature. This caused the heat to flow through the sample to the bottom. The team then measured the temperature of the top hemisphere. Because the sample’s thermal conductivity determines the amount of heat transferred, this measurement, along with finite element software, established the sample’s thermal conductivity.

Project Goal: Design a mannequin simulating human electrical properties that monitors current, temperature and voltage passing through the heart area.

Zoltar has developed lightning protection garments that reduce the risk of lightning-related deaths across the globe. For testing to verify performance, they require a mannequin that accurately measures the amount of current entering the heart area. The Team designed a mannequin that replicates the properties of a human and measures electricity entering the heart.

The plastic mannequin is wrapped in semi-conductive tape to simulate the electrical resistance of human skin. Inside the chest cavity, a ceramic rod imitates the electrical resistance of the heart. The rod sits in a current transformer with temperature and current sensors. The sensors are connected to a high-speed, high-bandwidth data acquisition system, or DAQ, that acquires data every 50 nanoseconds.

The DAQ transfers and stores the data on a Raspberry Pi. Users can save the sampled data to a USB drive, as well as display the data on a graph on the user interface. This data is used to verify the effectiveness of the protection garments.

Project Goal: Design, build and verify a motorized ultramicrotome stage to replace the manual stage adjustments with higher precision movements through automation.

An ultramicrotome uses a diamond knife to slice samples of various materials to nanoscale dimensions. The knife is located in a trough placed on the top of the upper stage. The existing design uses manual translation to align the knife with the sample at a specified distance.

The purpose of this project was to motorize the lower stage, allowing users to move the diamond knife with at least as much, if not more, precision than the existing design. The changes are expected to make the ultramicrotome even more appealing to consumers.

This new design uses stepper motors to accurately position and align the knife along both the x-axis and the y-axis. The steppers are controlled by command buttons. In addition, the controller digitally stores the specific position of the knife, making it easier for users to automatically adjust the stage to their preferred settings.

Project Goal: Redesign a Glass Knife Maker to be more user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing, while maintaining the quality of the glass knives produced by the existing design.

Glass knives are widely used in universities and laboratories around the world as a viable and cost-effective alternative to diamond or tungsten knives. The Glass Knife Maker, or GKM ,is an RMC Boeckeler product that breaks strips of glass at precise angles to produce ultra-sharp glass knives. The knives are used for ultramicrotomy and cryo-ultramicrotomy methods for cutting specimens into extremely thin slices. Boeckeler's existing Glass Knife Maker is considered one of the best instruments in the world for producing ultra-sharp glass knives. However, design modifications will help maintain the GKM’s competitive pricing and performance.

The team used SolidWorks to develop a new design then integrated commercial off-the-shelf parts and fabricated components to create a ready-for-testing prototype.

This project resulted in a simple, durable and mechanically sound design. Areas of improvement include aesthetics, user-friendliness, safety, compactness, production consistency and efficiency of the glass knifemaking process. Most importantly, the new instrument maintains the quality of the glass knives produced.