DIMLab - Design of Innovative Machines Lab

The Design of Innovative Machines Lab (the DIMLab) is home to the design team led by Dr. Drew Murray and Dr. Dave Myszka of the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department. The primary goal of the team is to create, design, build, and test novel machines and mechanisms for a variety of applications while generating the theory that supports these innovations. The DIMLab is in Fitz Hall, room 537, on the University of Dayton campus. 

Announcements
2018

On April 18th, seven DIMLab members presented their research at the Stander Symposium: 
  • Eric McGill- Design of a Self-Orienting Solar Array for Small Low-Earth Orbit Satellites 
  • Luke Schepers - Validating the Location and Tracking of a Human’s Center of Mass Using a Statically Equivalent Serial Chain  
  • Tanner Rolfe - Development and Actuation of a Shape-changing Rigid-body Human Foot Prototype
  • Hardik Viradiya - Dynamic Analysis of Alternative Mechanical Press Linkages
  • Kevin Brand - Experimental Validation and Reliability Testing for Center of Mass Body Tracking
  • Saleh Almestiri - Displacement Analysis and Rigid Body Guidance in Spherical Linkages Using SU(2) and Homotopy Continuation
  • Haithem Murgham - Steady-State Modeling of Condensing Units with an Economizer Loop 
  • Yucheng Li - Spatial Morphometric Analysis Using Shape-Changing Rigid-Body Chains
Their posters can be found here.
On March 27th, Drew Murray gave an invited presentation at Saint Louis University in the Parks College of Engineering, Avaition & Technology. The title of the talk was "The Links Between Things - Designs with Many Moving Parts." He was hosted by Riyadh Hindi.
In February, Dave Myszka was awarded an Air Force Research Lab Summer Faculty Fellowship.
On January 15th, Drew Murray gave an invited presentation in Nanjing, China at Southeast University. He then gave the presentation at Changzhou University in Changzhou, China on January 17th. The title of the talk was "Designing With Many (& Sometimes Too Many) Links: Shape-Changing Mechanisms in Dies and Morphometry, Infinity Chains, and Statically Equivalent Serial Chains." He was hosted in Nanjing by Bingjue Li and in Changzhou by Huiping Shen.
 


2017
In November, Myszka and Murray's research using the Ohio Supercomputer Center was featured in their 2016-2017 Research Report. 
In August, Dave Myszka joined the Structures Technology Branch of the Air Force Research Labs as a Visiting Researcher.
In May, the students submitted project videos for the class MEE 490: Kinematics of Robots and Mechanisms. Some of the videos may be found here. Tanner Rolfe and Joseph Heck made excellent videos featured here. Tanner's project focused on developing a mechanical jellyfish.  His video is set to Debussy's "La Cathedrale Engloutie" as performed by Francois-Joel Thiollier.
Joseph's project, featuring the song "underwOrld" by zerO One, presented a mechanical design for a cardiod tracer proposed in sketch form by Artobolevskii.
On April 10th, Tanner Rolfe, Haithem Murgham, and Sean Conway presented research at the Sigma Xi Annual Spring Talk and Poster Competition. Tanner earned 1st in the undergraduate competition and Haithem earned 2nd in the graduate competition.
In April, Kevin Brand received the Graduate Student Summer Fellowship for his proposal on Statically Equivalent Serial Chains. The award comes will a full stipend for summer 2017.
On April 5th, Eight DIMLab members presented their research at the Stander Symposium
  • Sean Duffin - The RASSO : A Robotic Assistant for Surgical LaparoScopic Operations
  • Sean Conway - Analysis of Joint Leakage in Variable Geometry Die  
  • Tanner Rolfe - Design and Prototyping of a Shape-changing Rigid-body Human Foot in Gait
  • Luke Kozal - Design of an Opposed-piston, Opposed-stroke Diesel Engine for Utility Aircraft
  • James Vogel - Assessing Shape Repeatability in Variable Geometry, Polymer Extrusion Dies
  • Saleh Almestiri - Spherical Linkages Analysis and Synthesis by Special Unitary Matrices for Solution via Numerical Algebraic Geometry
  • Ed Brinkerhoff - Energy Analysis of a Two Degree of Freedom Robotic System
  • Haithem Murgham - Simulation of an Automatic Commercial Ice Make
On April 4th, Drew Murray participated in the Humanizing Technology panel session associated with the installation of UD's new president Eric Spina.
In March, Joe Raffoul and Luke Schepers become members of the S.U.R.E. program providing a stipend to stay on campus for the summer and participate in DIMLab research.
On March 3rd, Drew Murray was invited to give the talk "Designing With Many (& Sometimes Too Many) Links: Shape-Changing Mechanisms in Dies and Morphometry, Infinity Chains, and Statically Equivalent Serial Chains" at the Laboratoire d'Informatique, de Robotique et de Microelectronique de Montpellier associated with the Universite Montpellier in France.
In January, Emerson continued their funding of the "Simulation of Refrigeration Equipment" project. This followed on the patent application for an ice machine simulation generated during the previous year's research effort.