Using a Funded Capstone Project to Teach Fluid Power and Advanced Mechanical Design

The A. Leon Linton Department of Mechanical Engineering at Lawrence Technological University offered a new senior capstone project to a small group of students, funded by a teaching grant from the National Fluid Power Association. All mechanical engineering students at Lawrence Tech must complete a capstone project: either an SAE competition team or a project addressing a particular industry need. The team that worked on the current project consisted of students with various concentrations in mechanical engineering and included an international visiting student from Brazil. Three faculty in Mechanical Engineering, each with different areas of expertise: thermodynamics, heat transfer, fluid mechanics and mechatronics, mentored and worked closely with the students at every step of this project. The objective of this project was to design and fabricate a classroom-scale gantry crane for material handling. The undergraduate students were not only involved in the design of a fluid powered system, but also worked on the modeling of mechanical components and the mechanical system as well as circuit design for an operator interface. The self-guided and real-world design aspect of the project increases the effectiveness of teaching by the faculty and retention of the subject by the students involved in the project.