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Department of Mechanical & Materials Engineering

Capstone team

Capstone for Sponsors

Identifying a Good Fit

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.

Identifying a Poor Fit

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

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Intellectual Property Rights

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.

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Course Structure 

The figure above shows how the activities of the Capstone teams are aligned with the three-course sequence, ME 491, 492, 493. The bulk of the project work occurs during the Winter (January – March) and Spring (April – June) academic terms.

ME 491 is the first course in the sequence that begins in the Fall term. ME 491 students learn a structured design process we expect them to follow; they form into teams; and they choose their projects. In late Fall term or at the start of Winter term (in ME 492) the teams meet with their sponsors to learn what the sponsor (the customer) wants to achieve through the project. By the end of Spring term (June), the teams have completed the design and manufacturing of a prototype that verifies whether the design meets the engineering objectives and customer requirements. Students create a prototype device as primary evidence of their achievement. Students must also demonstrate effective written and oral communication.

Each team produces three important written documents: a Project Proposal, a Progress Report, and a Final Report. The project proposal identifies the customer requirements and establishes the final goals for the project. The Progress Report documents the conceptual design process and is due at the end of ME 492. The Final Report is due at the end of the project, i.e. in June at the end of ME 493. Each student must also participate in at least two presentations during ME 492 and ME 493, including the final presentation and design fair attended by sponsors, MME faculty, and students at other points in their academic program.

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Time and Financial Commitments

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.

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