Eco-Marathon Team

Shells Eco-Marathon challenges international student teams to design, build, test and drive ultra-efficient vehicles in a competition measuring their energy expen-ditures.

Using balsa wood, foam, fiberglass cloth and epoxy hardener, this years CU team redesigned the car to be stronger, yet lighterall while making the shift from ethanol fuel to electric power.

As cars are moving to electric, we wanted to be part of that trend to be more competitive, said team member Luke Stelzner. It was grueling, but I learned so much, and in the end it was worth it.

CUs team won 4th place out of 27 teams at the Shell Eco-marathon national competition in Detroit in late April!

SAE Baja Team

For being only a second-year team in the SAE Baja Competition, the University of Colorado team is making moves in the auto industry. The team was assigned to design, create and market an off-road vehicle suitable for mass production. Rigorous testing revealed a tighter turning vehicle complete with a tried and true roll bar.

You need to know what youre designing to do it well, said Baja senior team member and driver Hanadi Salamah. This year were lighter, we maneuver better and have better suspension.

The CU SAE Baja Team will be competing for the most laps during a 4-hour endurance race in Pittsburg, Kansas, May 22-25, 2017.

McGuckin Hardware is a toy store for engineers, and thats probably why they take such pleasure in sponsor-ing projects from the best and brightest minds the University of Colorado has to offer. As the spring semester wrapped up, CU engineering students turned their blood, sweat and tears into innovative creationsgeared to not only get them the high grade, but to change the world of tomorrow for the better. During the McGuckin Hardware CU Student Engineering Expo, these young engineers gave the Boulder commu-nity a look at the final products.

Robotic Mining Competition (RMC) Team

NASAs annual competition challenges college engineer-ing teams to design robots capable of collecting and depositing samples of rocks and dustmining proto-types that the space agency hopes to someday repli-cate on Mars. The CU team improved last years robot by simplifying its design and knocking off some extra weightwhich may be the edge they need to collect the most earth in the 10-minute test.

Next year their goal is to make the robot completely autonomous to save much needed time in the new frontier of post-Earth exploration.

The competition is NASAs way of seeing who is capable of what, said RMC team member Ryan McCormick. They take what students are creating and apply it, and they use it as a talent hunt.

The RMC team will showcase their robot and compete at Cape Canaveral, Florida, May 22-27, 2017.

Senior Design Team 3

Boulders own Ball Aerospace tasked CU engineering senior Josiah Achenbach and his 7-person team to design a better payload lifter to streamline inefficiencies in their warehouse. The Senior Design Team 3 respond-ed with a wooden prototype of a counterweighted payload system that re-centers its gravity on the move based on pitch and roll feedback.

They were really happy, so we went ahead with the aluminum lifter, Josiah said.

Ball Aerospace has already implemented the payload system and is upscaling its design in time to lift even heavier items next spring.

CU STUDENT ENGINEERING

PROJECT EXPO