Senior Design Projects

Each Mechanical Engineering student completes a capstone design project spanning two consecutive semesters.  Students organize into teams to tackle a current engineering design problem.  Many of the projects are sponsored by regional industries and institutions.  Some of the projects are in response to national design competitions.  All of them involve opportunities to apply the technical principles covered in the classroom to the design of an actual product or process.  Students develop project management skills and learn to deal with real-world constraints such as time limits, deadlines, and budgets.  Teams also learn to properly document their efforts through written reports that include background research, analytical calculations, drawings, specifications, test procedures and performance results.  Regular meetings and progress updates are held with industry sponsors/mentors.  Each team is expected to formally present their project efforts and results to their peers and the public, either at the SDSU Senior Design Conference held in the fall or at the SDSU Engineering Expo held in the spring.

The senior design project is a transitional experience from the more structured subject-oriented course work to the open-ended challenge of solving real problems that are often only partially defined and for which there may be many possible solutions.  Students learn to put their skills to work and gain confidence in their abilities as they progress toward an acceptable solution, culminating in a finished product.

Some of the companies and agencies that have recently sponsored projects are:

3M Advance Avera Research Institue Caterpillar, Inc. Christiansen Welding & Machine    Concept Sales, Inc. Counterpart, Inc. Crimson Fire, Inc. Daktronics, Inc. Falcon Plastics, Inc. Fastenal Gehl Corp. Hillcrest Manufacturing JW Winco, Inc. Keizer Aluminum Wheels, Inc. Masaba, Inc. Mayo Clinic

PLE, Inc. POET, LLC. Royal Plastics, Inc. SDSU Student's Assoc. SDSU College of Engineering SDSU ME department SDSU Chemistry Department Soles Enterprises SolidWorks Star Circuits, Inc. Sungrant Corporation Tiger Corp. Twin City Fan & Blower Urethane Soy Systems U.S. Dept. of Defense, Benet Army Weapons Lab Washington Pavilion Kirby Science Center

There are also teams entered annually in the Society of Automotive Engineers’ (SAE) Mini-Baja or Mini-Indy vehicle design contests.