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Help yourself and the Community
Since 1994 the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Michigan State University has created synergistic partnerships with manufacturers to solve industrially significant problems and give students invaluable hands-on experience in design and manufacturing. The Design Laboratory at Michigan State University invites you to join us in challenging our senior class of mechanical engineers - the technological leaders of tomorrow.
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The Design Program: some vital statistics
In its first decade of service, the Design Program of the
Department of Mechanical Engineering completed over 400 projects to aid over 100 manufacturers located in over 50 communities and educated over 1,600 students.
Engineering Your Future
Students usually bring a fresh perspective to design problems. Countless times this has paid off handsomely for those manufacturers with the vision to capitalize on the win-win environment provided by this program. Immeasurable benefits are garnered by companies, communities, students, and ultimately, the nation.
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Types of Projects
Projects typically involve the creation of new products, the refinement of existing products, or the design of enhanced manufacturing facilities. Health, safety, and environmental concerns are frequently addressed.
Innovation
Projects must require creativity. Students should be free to explore many ideas and should have access to company data on benchmarking, customer surveys, and previous generations of products.
Prototype Fabrication
Projects should permit students to design, build and test a prototype. Exceptional paper studies are also accepted. However, students welcome hands-on engineering experiences and are highly motivated by them.
Proprietary information
Students deliver a public presentation at the end of semester Student Design Conference. If the project involves proprietary information or issues of intellectual property, then agreements between the students and the industrial partner are developed.
Conventional methods
Projects should require the application of fundamental engineering methods rather than familiarity with specialized technologies or exotic software packages.
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The Raw Ingredients
An Industrial problem involving
design or manufacturing
Cost: $4500
Program founded 1994
40-50 projects each year
Teams of four senior-level
students, a supervising professor and industrial advisors.
Duration is 15 weeks and
students invest about 600 hours in the project.
Ideally the project should
involve the design-build-test of a system.
Projects MUST have the potential
for creating many solutions.
The basic procedure is: define
the problem; create many solutions; select the best solution;
build a prototype; then test and validate it.
Industrial partners are
typically within a two-hour drive from Lansing.
Industrial partners can
capitalize on all of MSU's resources.
Students regularly visit their
industrial partner throughout the semester.
Students interact each week with
the industrial partner by e-mail.
Students write at least three
reports during the semester.
Intellectual property is
retained by the industrial partner.
Students are supported by a
staff of technicians.
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