CHICO – Students at Chico State College of Engineering, Computer Science and Construction Management, who are set to graduate this month, displayed their senior capstone projects at the college’s Senior Capstone Design Expo on Friday.
Mechanical and mechatronic engineering and advanced manufacturing projects were showcased in the O’Connell and Langdon Courtyard on campus.
Senior Jesse Rath and his team, which included Tyler Chesney, Jacob Crainock and Joe Overcashier, showed off their kinematic mount test stand. The objective of the project was to measure the joint stiffness and positional repeatability of kinematic mounts as a function of material, configuration, cleaning, preload, location errors at set-down, and number of cycles.
Chesney, who was graduating this month, got a job as a civil engineer in Yuba City. “I enjoy math and problem solving,” he said. “I am very grateful for my education here. Completing my pursuit of engineering. I see the world differently.”
Ideas for the projects were given by sponsors.
Jasmine Nguyen worked with her team on spatial alignment with machine vision robots including Anthony Aliotti, Michele Cabral and Clarice Rukalos. Their project was intended to replace an existing measurement system that used a number of fixed cameras mounted in the experiment area. The project used a robotic arm with an integrated vision system to measure components in 3D space with fiducial markers.
Nguyen and his team worked on this project for a year.
Nicholas Westerband and his team consisting of Shelby Bartlett, Jacob Corbin, Nathaniel Eitel and Craig Parks produced the 2MJ blast door extractor with embedded monitoring. The aim of their project was to design, build and test an updated door extractor capable of lifting 1200 pounds of blast doors on the main energy storage module at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility.
Westerband and his team spent 2,000 hours working on the project.
“Safety was the main thing,” Vesterband said.
After graduating Westerband would start a job at United Mechanic in San Jose.
Although all of the team’s main goals were to showcase their capstone projects, the awards were given with a monetary reward.