ME UNDERGRADUATE: Senior Design

Mechanical Engineering Capstone Design (MAE 416)

The Mechanical Engineering capstone design course, MAE 416 is a four-hour course students must take before they graduate. Here several teams of four to five mechanical engineering seniors are assigned the same real world problem that is defined by an industry sponsor. Each team produces its own design solution that includes a working prototype. Typically four to six working solutions are produced per class of 20 to 30 students.

Students demonstrating their prototype to a sponsor

The MAE 416 lab is outfitted with a complete welding and machining shop, tools, instrumentation, computer and PLC controllers, and a large inventory of automation related electrical and mechanical parts. In addition, the resources (library, faculty expertise, etc.) of a major university (NCSU) are available to the MAE 416 students.

ME students ready for a challenge

The course runs for 14 weeks with each student contributing from 10 to 20 hours of engineering talent per week. Thus with 30 students working on a project, over 6000 hours of engineering are applied!

Details are important

Students in this capstone course are seniors whose training is nearly complete; soon they will graduate and tackle industrial problems. Their minds are fresh and unbiased and they are eager to deal with real world design problems. The course pushes the students to produce innovative, simple and working solutions and past sponsors of the course have been enthusiastic about the quality and variety of designs.