FLATE’s multi-pronged approach to stimulate interest in
manufacturing and STEM, lies in its exemplary partnerships. The Center prides
itself as a leading resource for excellence in manufacturing education and
training, and leverages expertise to incumbent workers, educators and students
alike. These efforts have not only created a synergy between industry and
education, but have culminated in generating positive learning outcomes that
impact undergraduate and graduate students alike.
Most recently Dr. Alessandro Anzalone, director of the A.S.
degree in engineering technology at
Hillsborough Community College in Brandon
and winner of the 2013 FLATE Post-Secondary Educator Award, served as a mentor for
a Capstone student design project at the University of South Florida (USF). Capstone courses provide students with an educational
experience that integrates multiple areas of knowledge and dimensions. These
courses, by definition, lead to a summative product, or culminate into a
course, or a field-appropriate experience created by the student and the
instructor. (Source: USF General Education Council).
Working under these guidelines, Anzalone provided overall
insight into the details of an award-winning Capstone project, designed by
Rafael Perez and Jorge Sayed, seniors pursuing an undergraduate degree in
electrical engineering at USF. Anzalone helped come up with new ideas, troubleshoot
any challenges, and opened up the manufacturing lab at HCC for the students to
work and fine tune their project.
Perez and Sayed toyed with many ideas, but their winning idea
was inspired by a woman they stumbled upon, albeit online, while conducting
research and looking for a breakthrough idea. The woman was growing tomatoes in
a greenhouse which burned up because the temperature in the greenhouse was too
high. Against that backdrop, Perez and Sayed built a smart greenhouse using
PLCs, with an in-built weather controller station to monitor the temperature
and humidity levels.
A
key element of their design lay in “controlling
the temperature inside the greenhouse.” To comply, they
used two sensors: one
that controlled the temperature; the other that’d control the humidity with
respect to the inside temperature of the greenhouse. For the PLC, they chose a
Siemens PLC which was connected to a web server making it easier to interface
with web and/or mobile devices.
“The
greatest thing I got out of this project is the overall satisfaction gained
from winning the competition” said Perez. Upon completion of their term and
final project assessments, Perez and Sayed plan to donate their model/prototype
to the HCC engineering technology program so it can be used as a PLC training
station for current and/or future students enrolled in the program.
You
can learn more about Perez and Sayed’s smart greenhouse project below, or at http://youtu.be/xZ7-_EJuJac. For information on
FLATE and its STEM based initiatives contact Dr. Marilyn Barger at barger@fl-ate.org, or visit www.madeinflorida.org and www.fl-ate.org.
No comments :
Post a Comment