Over the years at TN Tech the Capstone Senior Design, and Design of Machine programs have been sold as the pentacle of the engineering quest. Most engineering universities measure your ability as an engineer by your senior design and/or design of machine projects. As in any institution that involves a professor with an engineering degree you are measured by their level of imagination and ability not yours. Many universities have an open-door policy that allows outside groups to use issues at hand, with funding, to access the student engineers in training to provide solutions for certain projects. For university shop technicians and financial associates these senior design projects turn into a fiasco at best. The process in most universities is based around a number of common misconceptions in the engineering world, senior design projects are facilitated to prove that students have been transferred the proper information to design, analyze, build a prototype, and establish a profitable manufacturing plan for a given product. Issues that commonly hamper this process in 2023 are students are not proficient in CAD software, properties of materials, fastener technology, and cost of manufacturing processes. The current generation of professors are caught up in alternative personal recognition and income related to “RESEARCH”. Universities measure professor value and push research as a source of income outside of tuition-based business models. The institution gets 40%- 60% off the top of each grant and /or funding source wrecking the undergraduate training model. At the end of the day engineering shop technicians end up evaluating student designs, correcting material choices, establishing machining processes, fastener choices, schedules for ordering material, machining, and manufacturing and testing protypes. Professors hide behind the premise that academic freedom in senior design, saying it defines the engineer’s training applied ability, in most cases it establishes the institution’s failure to prepare the student to be an engineer.
The Model Has to Change
At a SolidWorks 3D Experience event a number of Engineering Technicians had a workshop to address CAD software proficiency of “engineers in training” doing Capstone/ Collegiate Design. 20 to 30 universities were represented, and it was unanimous that Deans and Chairs at the Collegiate level discounted the importance of CAD enhanced learning while industry has increased its profitability by 100% utilizing CAD software. All the technicians in the workshop agreed the issue at hand is the undergraduate professors are CAD remedial at best and this powers the choices made in the Dean’s office. Technicians all agreed that separation of CAD design centers and manufacturing labs challenges the technician’s ability to communicate the design process of developing a one-off prototype. The 3D workshop also enforced from a facilitation standpoint that multiple random projects caused havoc and split the attention of the professor/ technician/ financial associates. Standardized project choices are easier for engineering technicians to control, establish schedules, material cost, design boundaries with defined project measurables. Standardized projects also give departments by-products to market, sell, and recruit students with enhancing program value. Several schools have established engineering design metrics for each standardized project, that includes a detailed engineering report, cost report, and manufacturing plan. Each standardized project category is launched with a review of products in the current marketplace. Student teams have the freedom to choose any standardized product, enhance an existing design and/or design a new product using an established engineering matrix. Listed below are a number of engineering specific projects that utilize multiple engineered systems with resources to test the capstone/ design of machine team’s imagination.