College

Through the club that I actively participate in, Engineers for a Sustainable World, I was able to create some sustainable designs. I am currently the leader of the Solar Team, where we developed the "Solar Smoothie Cart".

• 1. "Solar Smoothie Cart" This is easily described to the non-technical folk as a mobile cart much like a hot dog cart found in a big city such as NYC or Chicago. Then remove the umbrella and grill, and add a solar panel, electronic system and batteries, you get a "solar smoothie cart". What this is technically speaking is an aluminum-framed cart which houses 3 coolers and an electronic system. The electronic system consists of 12V DC to AC system with 500 amp hours of battery storage, receiving power from a 175W Sharp solar photo-voltaic panel.

  2. This design was inspired during a brainstorm session of our team. My team consisted of some fellow members of the fall 2010 mae.451 class Dan Snitzer and Ryan Bonetto The original concept of this design came from the want to develop something with a solar panel that could possible help pay for itself, and put money back into the club. We decided upon a fund-raising vehicle such as a cart that sells something at a reasonable price, and can be used multiple times.

  3. For materials, we decided upon aluminum for the cart's frame, as it makes our solar smoothie cart very light without sacrificing too much strength, so we can easily move this around as it is not powered, and must be delivered to the selling site via man-power. The very most bottom plate is steel, and that is because that is where most of the weight (batteries, electronic systems) are placed. For shelving, door supports and top work surface support, plywood was chosen to help save on cost of the cart. This cart was modeled in Autodesk Inventor before it was put into form in our Jarvis Machine shop here on campus.

• 1. BattleBot (Version 1). Every year, UB holds Engineers week, which is a week long competition for all of the engineering clubs on campus to compete in. The winner gets bragging rights for the year, a very prestigious engineering award. The competition ends with a "Battle-Bots" competition, where clubs design and develop robots to defeat other club's robots. Our team, Team Sustain, built a robot over the span of two years. I was mainly involved in the mechanical designing of the robot, as well as the building in the machine shop. The robot consists of 2 12V batteries powering a 1HP motor connected to a 28" John Deere lawn mower blade for maximum robot carnage. To drive the robot, we took old window motors from a car at a junk yard to drive the robot. These motors were chosen as they have decent torque and a low profile for our blade to have good clearance over it.

  2. Our team came to this design as a robot that had the lowest possible blade height for maximum ability to hit other robots. In case our robot wasn't low enough, we included a ramp for the front nose cone. The robot was built out of aluminum 2024, an alloy mainly used in aircraft. This material was chosen for it's strength and lightweight properties, as we were constrained to 45lbs maximum in a 18" by 18" by 30" space. Here is a picture and a video of our final product:

• 1. BattleBot (Version 2) - Under Construction! Due to the competitive nature of Engineer's week and the BattleBot competition, I'm not going to post the details of this robot quite yet. Look to see the completed robot come Engineer's week!

  2. MAE377 Final Design Portfolio. - We were given the task of designing a specific product in Pro-Engineer, while adding a gear, spring, and screw to the design. My task was to develop a personal recreational chair that is fully collapsible and maintains comfort.

• 1. Recreational Table - Planned for construction over this coming winter break. The general design for the table will be a standard 4' x 8' table, that is fold-able. My roommates and I have a passion for collecting bottle caps, and we have a preliminary design for this table. The table will be made from plywood, but have a plexi-glass top for easy cleaning. LEDs are planned to accent this table's logo. Here is the preliminary design. modeled after the greatest NFL team's logo. The Buffalo Bills:

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