Design winners to compete in finals during Congress

Jack Raplee
ASME NEWS

With the regional competitions now complete, the stage is set for the Student Design Contest finals during the International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, Nov. 17-22 in New Orleans.

The challenge for this year's Student Design Contest, called "Baseball Frenzy," was to design a device for the inspection of baseballs. Baseballs must meet Official Little League standards and must reach the prescribed acceleration rate, which can be measured by the ball's flight path when tossed.

Student team devices must launch 30 baseballs at three targets, before being fed into packaging lines.

A contender in the regional competition.

After a two-minute trial, the devices are judged by the number of baseballs completely inside one of the three targets, the number of targets containing three or more baseballs, the time it takes to successfully toss all 30 baseballs and the amount of time it takes to ready the system after the first minute.

Regional first-place teams were awarded $200, a trophy and a travel allowance of up to $1,000 to attend the finals at Congress.

The winning teams were: Region I: Travis Johnston and John Partlow, University of Vermont; Region II: Thomas Cook and Jason Strauss, New Jersey Institute of Technology; Region III: Joseph Plitz and Michael Resciniti, Rowan University; Region IV: Stephanie Ferrufino and Jeffrey Sharp, Virginia Tech.

Region V: Erin Reynolds, Nicole Rott and Elaine Smith, Michigan State University; Region VI: Karen Ballman, James Carter, Chris Delaney and Jennifer Smith, University of Kentucky; Region VII: David Lofgren, Bjorn Ojard and Jonathan Robelia, University of Minnesota; Region VIII: Brian Gin, Kalan Guiley and Darren Johnson, Oregon State University; Region IX: Jason Allen, Somachai Khaleck and David Panscik, San Joaquin Delta College.
Region X: Jonathan Edwards, Caleb Fulks, Michael Hendricks and Nathan Niphakis, LeTourneau University; Region XI: Grant Harlow, Mississippi State University; Region XII: Jorge Rascon, Pedro Torres and Oscar Villegas, Instituto Technologico Ciudad
de Juarez.

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