Capstone Guidelines for Sponsors

Engineering is a diverse field and engineering practice spans many activities. Our capstone course sequence aims to give students an opportunity to practice engineering design on a project beginning with discovery of customer requirements through production and testing of a prototype. Therefore, not all good engineering projects are a good fit with capstone.

Here are some examples of projects that are a good fit for capstone:

• Exploratory products that need a first major prototype stage

• Equipment modification to address a defect or improve performance

• Devices that perform a mechanical or thermal test

• Fixtures or subsystems that improve an existing manufacturing process

• Automation of new or existing new equipment or processes

• Devices to improve safety or ergonomics

• Custom processing equipment that is not available as an off-the-shelf device

• Projects related to energy savings or improved sustainability

All of these projects are likely to create tangible benefits to the sponsor. However, Capstone projects should not be in a critical path for your company or organization. In other words, our students should not be building something that you intend to release as a product immediately at the end of the capstone projects.

Our students almost always have successful Capstone projects, whereby “successful” we mean that the students achieve the initial goals of their project proposal and the sponsor obtains the benefits of six months of engineering effort from the team. The overwhelming majority of our Capstone sponsors are happy about the outcomes. Usually some version the student project is put to use in a production environment or it becomes a product. Despite our record of success, you should not depend on a Capstone project to solve a critical need on a rigid deadline.

Not all good engineering projects make good Capstone projects. Since our goal is to give students a multifaceted design experience, projects that lack breadth or lack open-ended design questions are not chosen for Capstone projects.

Here are some other characteristics of projects that are a poor fit for our Senior Capstone:

• Strict deadlines that are not compatible with the academic calendar

• Proprietary technology from the sponsor

• Design of complex, large scale facilities, e.g. a manufacturing line

• Projects with high prototyping costs

• Projects requiring use of hazardous materials

• Projects that require team members to perform extensive fabrication work instead of or to the detriment of engineering design work

• Small and obvious incremental updates to an existing device

• Extensive experimentation or a focus on research

• Projects that have little need for prototype development and testing, e.g. pure engineering analysis

Intellectual Property (IP) is a complex and often expensive factor in engineering work. We recognize that companies have IP portfolios and have significant financial investments in their products and processes. Rarely is IP a problem in capstone projects.

Portland State does not claim any ownership of IP resulting from undergraduate capstone projects. Our strong preference is that the creative effort of our students is recognized, especially when that effort results in the creation of IP. Students have filed patent disclosures for past projects. Though the creation of patents is not an explicit goal of the Capstone class, we support and encourage our students to protect the IP they may create.

We would prefer that students are given a fair share of any IP they develop. If asked, our students usually have no problems signing non-disclosure agreements. If you have concerns about IP on a capstone project, please let us know early in the process so that we can work with you and inform student teams about any constraints on the project.

The mechanical engineering capstone project is a three-term sequence taken by all senior students. The bulk of the project work occurs during the Winter (January – March) and Spring (April – June) academic terms. 

At the start of Fall term (Sep/Oct), students are assigned to projects. The teams establish contact with their sponsors and begin to learn more about what the sponsor is seeking to accomplish during the capstone project. Simultaneously students are taught a structured design process that they are expected to follow. The term culminates in the generation of an engineering design specification (EDS) that clearly outlines the deliverables, technical requirements, constraints, performance criteria and timelines for the project. The students also present their proposals to faculty and the wider class body, and sponsors are encouraged to attend these presentations where possible. 

During winter term, students focus on building prototypes and proof-of-concepts for their projects. There are also two update presentations (midway and at the end of term) where teams outline their progress to date as well as any changes made to the project. As always, sponsors are encouraged to attend these presentations where possible. 

Finally, in spring, students complete their capstone project and generate a formal engineering report. Students also participate in a public exposition (typically held in June) where they are required to present their work to a general audience. Sponsors are highly encouraged to attend the expo to help their students celebrate their work.

Each sponsor must agree to providing a person who functions as the customer or industrial advisor by providing information about design requirements. Industrial sponsors should expect to spend one to two hours of contact with their capstone team during each month from November to June. Most of that time is answering questions about the customer requirements, or in design reviews.

All teams are required to create a prototype that allows them to test their designs against the customer requirements. Sponsors are expected to provide resources for prototyping and testing of the designs. Those resources can be raw materials for fabrication of the prototype, in-kind support of fabrication (e.g. shop time for fabrication of parts), hardware (e.g. components or prototypes that can be cannibalized), and cash for the purchase of components, sensors and materials. Typical prototype costs are between $750 and $3000 for hardware, sensors, and other materials, with most projects being on the low end of that range.

Students and faculty add value far in excess of the cost of the materials provided by sponsors. Therefore, for-profit companies are also asked to provide $1000 in base support for project beyond the cost of materials and prototyping. The base support helps us to defray the cost of maintaining lab space for fabrication and testing, and maintenance of tools in our machine shop.