Engineering students show off mechanic projects

CHICO — The Chico State College of Engineering, Computer Science and Construction Management students, who are set to graduate this month, displayed their senior capstone projects Friday at the college’s Senior Capstone Design Expo.

The Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing projects were featured in the O’Connell and Langdon courtyard on campus.

Senior Jesse Rath and his team, consisting of Tyler Chesney, Jacob Krainock and Joe Overcashier showed off their kinematic mount test stand. The purpose of the project was measure the joint stiffness and positional repeatability of kinematic mounts as a function of materials, configurations, cleanliness, preloads, location errors at set-down and number of cycles.

Chesney, who is graduating this month, got a job as a civil engineer in Yuba City. “I enjoy math and problem solving,” he said. “I’m so thankful for my education here. Pursuing engineering has been fulfilling. I look at the world in a different way.”

The ideas for the projects were given by sponsors.

Jasmine Nguyen worked with her team consisting of Anthony Aliotti, Mitchell Cabral and Clarice Rucklos on a spatial alignment with machine vision robot. The purpose of their project was to replace an existing measurement system which utilized several fixed cameras mounted in the experimentation area. The project utilized a robotic arm with an integrated vision system to measure the components in 3D space with fiducial markers.

Nguyen and her team worked on the project for a year.

Nicholas Westerband and his team consisting of Shelby Bartlett, Jacob Corbin, Nathaniel Eitel and Craig Parks produced a 2 MJ Blast Door Extractor with Embedded Monitoring. The purpose of their project was to design, build and test an updated door extractor capable of lifting the 1200 pound blast doors on the main energy storage modules at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory National Ignition Facility.

Westerband and his team spent 2,000 hours working on the project.

“Safety was the main thing,” Westerband said.

Westerband will be starting a job at United Mechanic in San Jose after he graduates.

Although all of the team’s main goals were to showcase their capstone projects, awards were given out with a monetary prize.