About The Class

"Engineering 29 or "Manufacturing & Design Communication" is a core course in the Mechanical Engineering curriculum, which introduces three interconnected sets of topics: manufacturing processes, dimensional tolerancing and design communication." (taken from class syllabus)

The final project for this class involved a design, tolerancing and prototyping project in which students developed a prototype of a mechanical device. The aim was to allow us to apply what we had learned about manufacturing processes and dimensional tolerancing!

Problem

We were asked to address one of the following open-ended briefs for our final project:
• Design a mechanical device to enhance the capabilities of a smartphone.
• Design a mechanical device to reduce the risk of transmission of the omicron or future variants of Covid-19.
• Design a mechanical device to facilitate “hybrid” events (e.g. parties, family gatherings, lectures, meetings, study sessions, etc) where some people gather in-person and others join via electronic means.
• If there is a different brief that you particularly want to address, your team can propose it.

"The emphasis (of this project) is on mechanical components and the interactions between them, rather than, for example, electronics or software, which are not expected to be a significant element of the project." (taken from class syllabus)

Initial Thought Process

Our team brainstormed a few ideas that not only fulfilled our project requirements but would also be something that hit close to home. My team and I, which consisted of 5 engineering students in total, decided to pursue prototypes that would aid in preventing COVID-19 and would also serve college students (and any other working professional) as they go about their days.

These were our concepts:

Phone Disinfection System
- Portable Phone Sanitizing Product.
Enhanced Hand Sanitizer
- Enhanced dispenser that prevents contact with users.
Scooter Lock
- New lock to offer extra security for scooters.
Multi-Functional Laptop Stand
- Enhanced laptop stand that provides portability and contains other features enhancing desk experience.

Our initial choice for our project was actually the idea of a new and improved scooter lock.

Project Redirection

However, after having a very constructive design review with our professor and teacher's assistant, we decided to tackle another brainstormed idea of ours, which was the multi-functional laptop stand that we were able to successfully prototype.

I also took part in doing market needs and research analysis, as seen below:

We went through 3 iterations of this project, as shown below:

I was in charge of the full 3D model assembly (as shown on the righthand side), where I was able to display my SolidWorks Modeling and Assembly skills! Overall, this was a project where the workload was distributed evenly, and everyone had a part to play when it came to manufacturing, CAD work, physical assembly and testing, and class milestone checkpoint deliverables.

Final Deliverables

Here are more pictures of our final prototype up-close, both taken from SolidWorks and in-person! Feel free to check out our submission PDF as well as our final project video that we recorded :)

PDFs: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f0IfvKfbFq3rKpebZToWhLqLGq16044W/view?usp=drive_link and https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Onhv5BDUiVGHrha1T3QZXzKonXAnLPKh/view?usp=drive_link

Recorded video:

Multi-Functional Laptop Stand