From Book to Buggy: The Mechanical Engineering Capstone Project

For mechanical engineering technology students, their capstone project is to make an complete and fully functional buggy or off road vehicle. Over the course of their time here at the Sinclair Mechanical Engineering Program, they learned a multitude of skills which are put to the test in the creation of this buggy.

As with any project it cannot be done with one person alone. No matter how skilled an individual might be, a project this big would be too overwhelming for just one student, especially not one this complex and multifaceted.

By joining together as a team, they are able to complete tasks much bigger than they could have as individuals.

Colin Kimuli, like every student doing this capstone will be graduating at the end of this semester. He intends to pursue a career in engineering and spoke on the importance of teamwork in the field.

“The reason why you need to have a lot of teamwork, you need to have a team while working on the buggy is because you can’t have someone who knows everything. You need to have someone who specializes in one thing and someone who specializes in the another thing, which will make your work more efficient,” Kimuli said.

Because this buggy tests their skills in a multitude of disciplines and situations, it comes with its fair share of challenges. Manufacturing is a large source of these challenges.

Just because a part works in a 3D modeling program, it doesn’t mean it will fit properly when applied to the physical buggy. Making a fully realized part for every iteration would quickly become too expensive to continue development.

The students of mechanical engineering have a clever solution to this, making proof-of-concept versions of the parts out of cardboard. 

“We can’t really cut this out until we have something that’s exact, because this is expensive. So we use the cardboard as a blueprint to cut out the sheet metal,” Kimuli said.

The professor of the program, Moradmand Jamshid, is confident that these students can go on to have bright futures in manufacturing and engineering. He believes this because of the unique advantage Sinclair offers that other colleges do not: real-world experience. Other schools focus more one the book and do not teach hands on the way Sinclair does.

The world of manufacturing these students are going into after college is filled with its own concerns and changes. Prime among these concerns for many people is automation. The idea that robots will replace human beings in jobs like manufacturing and other related fields.

“You also have to look at the cost of production. Companies want to have the lowest cost of production. Most would assume it’s cheaper to hire a welder than to buy a $100,000 robot, but its really about the economies of scale, and if the companies can save money then they will choose to do so,” Kimuli said.

Kimuli and his fellow students of the Mechanical Engineering Program take pride in their accomplishments on this project. 

From here the students will go into the workforce with rounded knowledge, real world experience and an edge in their respective fields.

Andrew Barnes, staff writer

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