A UF Mechanical Engineering lab aimed to make the perfect cup of joe.
Last Fall, 13 students from Mechanical Design III: Design Realization, taught by Professor Gregory Sawyer, designed and built three espresso machines, to make the engineering concepts they learned a reality, said lab instructor Sean Niemi.
“You have fluid mechanics, structural mechanics, you have some form of control system … testing and validation … electrical (components); an espresso machine hits all of those,” Niemi said.
The finished machines were presented by the students to representatives from the project’s sponsors, defense company Northrop Grumman and energy provider Cummins Inc.
The machines were required to be manual rather than automatic, as “an automatic one is not elegant,” Niemi said. Sawyer’s Spring 2018 class is working on designing an autonomous hydrofoiling surfboard, or a hovering surfboard.
“It was a great way for the students to showcase what they had learned and achieved,” Niemi said.
Derek Hood, who was a UF mechanical engineering senior when working on the project, is not a coffee drinker but enjoyed making an espresso machine and giving coffee samples to classmates.
“I wouldn’t know what good espresso was if it hit me in the face,” the 22-year-old said.
Contact Elliott Nasby at enasby@alligator.org. Follow him on Twitter at @_ElohEl.
Students from Fall’s Mechanical Design III: Design Realization, taught by Professor Gregory Sawyer, designed and built three espresso machines. They showed their final products to representatives from the project’s sponsors, defense company Northrop Grumman and energy provider Cummins Inc.
