JUNE 2005 ISSUE
EDUCATION
Mech Students Grind Through Capstone Competition
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Capstone Winners |
Local manufacturers have again honoured University of Alberta mechanical engineering students by giving them the gears. Or the gear reducers, that is.
The fifth annual Capstone Honours Awards, April 6, saw 12 students receive their trophies — scaled-down commercial gear reducers — for exceptional design and presentation performance.
Students chose one of 25 industry-sponsored design projects, each with challenging design restraints. Each competing student at the Capstone Honours Award Night received a $250 scholarship, along with the working model trophy and a student version of SolidWorks.
More than $260,000 has been donated over the past five years to cover the cost of manufacturing the trophies and to set up a scholarship fund. Each trophy costs more than $1,500 to produce and is manufactured through Edmonton-area industry sponsors. The awards are sponsored by the Northern Lights Chapter of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers.
Robert Farthing, Jenelle Fisher, Thomas Auer and Anthony Chan won the Thorsten Watterodt Design Creativity Award and Glatz Memorial Award for their surgical nail removal tool. Francis Waterhouse, Tim Wright, Po To Benedict Lau and Mohamed Chebaro won the Northern Lights Design for Manufacturing Award for their soil sampling device. And James Brown, Kirk Giesbrecht, Devin Eley and Chad Benson won the Northern Lights Technical Excellence Award for their spa plumbing project.