It’s Design day at Michigan State.
“A few long days in the shop and then we got it all done,” one student said.
Visiting high school seniors were eager to learn and play.
“Was the assignment given to you?” asked high school sophomore Adam DorstewitZ. “Like build a little giant golf machine?”
Some students had their sales pitches down pat.
“You want to grate some cheese? Give it a shot. The cheesy does it does it all.”
Others tried to pay their customers.
“No matter how fast or how slow you spin this, you’re gonna make 25 dollars an hour in pennies,” said mechanical engineering senior Richard Tran.
Everyone had the same guidelines, but everything was unique.
“The requirements are it has to fit 2 feet by 2 feet by 2 feet cubed and then it has to have gears and a cam and it has to have a four bar linkage,” one student said.
At Design Day there’s everything from playing golf to slicing fruit in a guillotine.
“Some of this stuff is really cool,” Dorstewitz said. “The guillotine right there is interesting. They made the blade and it’s just fun to watch them sever fruit.”
There was a lot of planning.
“We originally wanted to put the switch into the actually ramp so it would do an automatic return,” said mechanical engineering senior Matthew Schomisch. “We ended up settling on a manual return because it’s a lot more reliable.”
Some projects came down to the wire.
“We were able to finish this about 5am today,” Tran said.
High school students like Adam just enjoyed the end products.
“It’s cool to look at these experiments,” Dorstewitz said. “You know, playing basketball and you get candy. It’s been a really fun.”
With these products to end the semester, everyone who participated had a fantastic time.
“It’s a great atmosphere,” Schomisch said. “I love having the local high school kids come around and see everything. It’s great.”