Feature Story Contributed by Connor Wilson --

In June 2019, myself, an undergraduate Computer Science student, and an undergraduate student in Mechanical Engineering, Dustin Harper, competed in the ASME/MSEC Student Design Competition held in Erie, Pennsylvania. Other group members that assisted with the project were an undergraduate Mechanical Engineering student, Ella Mudry, and a graduate Industrial Engineering student, Sriram Manoharan. The competition featured eight finalist teams from universities throughout the country presenting their manufacturing engineering projects. Our team worked on a project that was supported by the U.S. DOE through the OSU Industrial Assessment Center to design and build a low-cost hybrid additive and subtractive manufacturing (HASM) machine. Ella and I had received the Undergraduate Research Scholarship and the Arts (URSA) Engage award, conducting research in the Industrial Sustainability Lab with Professor Haapala, while Dustin had received the URSA Engage award in 2018. Dustin and Ella worked on the mechanical and electrical integration aspects of the project, which included the wiring of the circuit boards, assembling the printer, and ensuring that the machine was operating correctly. I focused on creating a software known as our G-Code Integrator, which combined 3D-printing G-codes and milling G-codes, which jointly controlled the machine movements for completing the manufacturing operations.

 

The project is aiming toward creating a learning kit to help educate pre-college students about the different disciplines of engineering, ranging from computer science to manufacturing to sustainable engineering.These manufacturing kits would be capable of performing hybrid manufacturing processes, or both additive and subtractive manufacturing in a single setup on a single machine. Additive manufacturing was accomplished using fused filament deposition and the subtractive manufacturing was performed using vertical milling. This allowed for the part we created to stay on one platform without having to be moved between seperate machines. 

 

In addition to the competition, we were provided with many new experiences such as visiting Niagara Falls, going to the Great Lakes, and eating beef on weck.