MSOE’s American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Student Design team took fifth place in the final round of the 2016 challenge to design and build prototypes of a battery-powered, compact manufacturing system that could fire paper projectiles through the air.

Eighteen student teams from 10 countries faced off at the 2016 Student Design finals, which were held Nov. 11-17, 2016 at the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) in Phoenix.

The competition’s panel of judges assessed the entries on criteria including total distance traveled by the team’s projectiles and the total measured volume of each system. The MSOE team’s device recorded the farthest distance of all the entries.

The MSOE team’s machine accomplished this by rolling up the paper inside a steel tube, crushing it into a dense cylinder using a ball screw that applied over 1,000 pounds of force, and throwing it using a slingshot style mechanism.

Two members of the 2015-16 senior design team—recent mechanical engineering graduates Arthur Siebel and Sven Kirschtowski—represented MSOE at the national event along with their advisor Dr. Mohammad Mahinfalah. Other members of the team included 2016 mechanical engineering graduates Clark Anderson, Bilal Nyazi, Devin Runner, Ou Yang and electrical engineering graduate Pascal Dettmann.

MSOE’s ASME Student Design team qualified for finals in April after receiving second place at the regional ASME Student Professional Development Conferences event at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

The ASME Student Design Competition provides a platform for ASME Student Members to present their solutions to a range of design problems – from everyday household tasks to groundbreaking space exploration. Each team is required to design, construct and operate a prototype meeting the requirements of an annually determined problem statement.

The Student Design Competition showcases the extraordinary talents of mechanical engineering students while encouraging them to develop innovative ideas towards an improved quality of life for all. Each year, several teams compete at the regional Student Professional Development Conferences in select locations worldwide