Capstone Design Program

Capstone Design is the culmination of the undergraduate student’s study in mechanical engineering and is a required course. Participation of private and industry sponsors enable our students to gain experience with projects that have real-world applications. We welcome industry inquiries about this program and welcome projects involving machine systems, product, and/or process design.  The program currently features:

• ME 4150 – Machine Systems Design – 1 semester course every Fall and Spring semesters

A typical industry sponsored project for ME 4150 will involve two assigned teams consisting of 4 to 6 engineering students who will apply 15 weeks of focused attention to the project. Teams can work independent of each other providing the sponsor two parallel paths of effort or can work collaboratively on the same problem. These options are usually not available to companies and can provide a significant advantage in providing multiple workable solutions for the same problem.

Project Team Meetings

Every sponsor is asked to provide one or more persons who can serve as a weekly contact for the design teams to confer with as the project progresses and to have an alternative contact person in case the project contact is not available. Most communication is done via email, voicemail, or video conference. Typical project team meetings with their sponsors are once every two weeks and last 15 to 30 minutes.

Requested Support Funding

Our requested support funding for a semester project is:

• Small industry (less than 500 employees) – $5000
• Large industry (>500 employees) – $8000

We will assign two teams of 4 to 6 students each to a project.  Each team will have a $1000 budget to cover travel, material and shop costs.  The remaining funds cover team budget overruns, administrative costs and shop material expenses.  Department and student organization projects are at no cost, but the sponsor must cover all material costs for one assigned team.