Rose-Hulman students display engineering design projects

May 3—Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology's annual Rose Show, presented Wednesday afternoon at the school's recreation center, is a science fair writ large, hardly for your average high-school student.

Some of the projects were useful, while others were downright fanciful. Useful projects dominated the William Kline Innovation Awards.

First place was a tie. "RECLAIM: RECycling Low-Cost Automated Injection Molder," which molds recycled plastic from Rose-Hulman facilities into useful products. Members of the team that created this project were Emily Bartling, Annalise Gant, Bryson Halsey and Tommy Welsh.

The other first-place winner was called "Element Off-road Axel Disconnect System," which decreases tire wear in side-by-side vehicles, greatly enhancing their level of performance. Calvin Jorgensen, Connor Luce, Randyn Tarnoff and Michael Wilson — all first-year engineering design students — claimed this prize.

Honorable Mention went to a project discussed earlier in the Tribune-Star: "Engineering a Community for Homeless Opportunity," a trailer that can be pulled by a bicycle that secures the individual's belongings and provides a space to sleep and relax. Therese Jaeger, Garrett Janning, Pat Kelly and Lane Lawrence were the team members responsible for this project, the brainchild Terre Haute Garri Knezevich, who participates in a number of socially conscious ventures.

One team partnered up with Steel Dynamics, who commissioned them to build a Color Meter Traversing Mechanism that monitors equipment to ensure that a new paint would paint metal sheets meeting their quality standards. They devised a color sensor traverser controller with a camera to move back and forth over the metal being painted.

"It senses the trends in the different colors of paint — if there's a difference, that'll raise some warning flags," explained senior Payton Gryniewicz, one of eight team members. The color sensor has both an automatic mode and a manual mode where an operator guides its movements, depending to the width of the steel sheets being painted.

"They've liked it," Gryniewicz said of Steel Dynamics. "We demoed to our client there who's been working with us telling us specifically what they want. He was pretty satisfied and excited about it."

Fellow team member T.J. Rutan said most of the programming on the project was easy.

"Most of our issues came from supply issues," he added. "In the industry right now, some of the other different applications within the industry have been stopped primarily because of part shortages. Some plants have had to shut down because they can't get these kinds of parts."

One professor, Zac Chambers, is also a member of the Zorah Shrine, and zooms about in a go-kart car during summer parades. When his vehicle became unreliable and a local sanitation department gifted him a Porta Potty, he assigned his team of six to fashion a parade vehicle from the outdoor john.

Voila: a diesel-powered Porta-john parade vehicle.

"He wanted it to look as if a Porta Potty was driving itself down the road in the parade," said J.D. Spiceland, who, like his team members, sported a polo shirt reading "Team Outhouse." One-way windows were installed so parade viewers can't see in but the driver can see out.

"It's no longer useful as an outhouse, just a vehicle," Spiceland said, which no doubt is a relief. "You still get that Porta Potty vibe, it's just a painted Porta Potty."

Though most participants in the Rose Show were seniors, there was a team of juniors called the Human Powered Vehicle Team who took on a volunteer side project.

Briggs Fultz helped build the "Elephantom" — "a bike that moves fast and hopefully looks cool along the way," as he called it.

The Elephantom can achieve speeds of 35 miles an hour, faster than the pokey drivers who slow the traffic on Poplar Street.

"We like to pass cars around campus," Fultz said.

The grandest novelty project was the Rose-Hulman Rube Goldberg Machine, a hodgepodge of springs, gizmos and moving parts created to depict five emotions experienced by the school's students: excitement, overwhelm, frustration, fatigue and relief.

Excitement began when the device was demonstrated, but frustration soon prevailed: A jack-in-the-box didn't set a steel ball in motion down a chute as expected, a Matchbox car got stuck on its track and so on. But once it reached its conclusion, an air cannon sprayed an explosion of confetti across the table, bringing relief to everyone.

David Kronke can be reached at 812-231-4232 or at david.kronke@tribstar.com.