Dr. Grant Risha (second from the left), distinguished professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State Altoona, poses with a winning student team made up of mechanical engineering students Joshua Emeigh, Owen France, Nicholas Johns and James Rowe at the conclusion of spring 2025 Engineering Design Competition.
ALTOONA, Pa. — Near the end of the spring 2025 semester, third-year mechanical engineering students at Penn State Altoona competed in an engineering design competition as part of ME 340: Mechanical Engineering Design Methodology.
The course, taught by Assistant Professor Shreyash Gulati, introduces students to the three major steps required to create an engineering design: conceptual design, preliminary design and detailed design. A major component of this course is a project in which students are grouped into teams of three or four.
Students participate in activities to learn about brainstorming ideas, selecting the best ideas, prototyping, implementing engineering analysis for product design, project management, and economic analysis. They then apply their knowledge of engineering design processes and project management to create their designs.
The performance of the student designs is evaluated in two ways. Each student team presents their work through a PowerPoint presentation at the end of each design phase (conceptual, preliminary and detailed design). Finally, the actual performance of the final design is evaluated through a design competition or a final demonstration.
For spring 2025, student teams were instructed to design gripper arms that can be mounted on a Fuji Automatic Numerical Control (FANUC) robot and used to pick and move bakery items like cookies, doughnuts, muffins and cupcakes made of Play-Doh and Jell-O.
Gulati sums up his ME 340 experience for spring 2025 as “a wonderful experience as always to see students learn by applying their hands-on skills as they worked on their projects. They pushed themselves beyond the regular classroom learning. Picking up a Jell-O cupcake is no ‘piece of cake.’ Seeing the students attempt that daunting task is itself a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
Students voted for the best-performing team, which this year included Joshua Emeigh, Owen France, Nicholas Johns and James Rowe.
Watch a video of students participating in the competition below.
Penn State Altoona mechanical engineering students participated in a spring 2025 engineering design competition in which teams created gripper arms for a robot and attempted to pick up cookies, doughnuts, muffins, and cupcakes made of Play-Doh and Jell-O.
