Tong Prototype Prize 2004

"It is often said that pictures can describe 1,000 words; for engineering, prototypes describe thousands of ideas."

— Luke Harris, a biomedical engineering senior whose team submitted an entry in the 2004 Tong Prototype Prize competition.

INVENTIONS AND THEIR PROTOTYPES
• Polymer Pellet Separation via Density • Ice Net X • Laptop EZ Store
• IceLight • Flexi-Desk • Angular Lifting Dolly
• Air Tuner Drum System • ITAP: The Inflatable Transfer Assistance Platform
• S-BMX Conversion Kit • Infinitely Variable Chain-Driven Transmission
• Portable Computer-Aided Drug Dispenser • Cello Talon

Polymer Pellet Separation via Density — First Place

Chemical and biological engineering student Aaron Wallander spent parts of two summer internships separating more than 400 pounds of different polymer pellets (the middle step in plastics manufacturing) with a tweezers. Companies sometimes need to separate these pellet mixtures for quality control or to test new machinery.

He couldn't believe there wasn't an automated way to do it. "You sit there and you pick them apart long enough and you think of stuff," he says. "But the idea didn't come to me then — otherwise I wouldn't have been doing it all summer."

Later, however, Wallander devised a system that sorts each pellet type by its different density, rather than its appearance. His method flows the pellets from a hopper into a fluid-filled tank. Pellets lighter than the fluid float and flow into an adjacent tank, while pellets heavier than the fluid sink and remain in the initial tank. The invention and prototype won first place and $2,500 in the Tong Prototype Prize competition.

Without his Tong prototype grant, Wallander says he could not have built his system — a crucial step in his design process. Once he began constructing the pellet separator, he found he needed to modify several aspects of his design slightly so that it worked the way he hoped it would. "It really allowed my idea to come to life before my eyes," he says. "The prototype also allows other people to better understand the idea of the invention."

Ice Net X — Third Place

Anyone who knows the basics of ice fishing — drill a small hole in the ice, drop a line, lift your catch through the hole — can understand why Nicholas Passint, Joe Cessna and Bryan Wilson built the Ice Net X, which won top honors and $10,000 in the Schoofs Prize for Creativity.

Fishermen who catch heavier, stronger fish don't have a good way to hoist them through the ice without cutting the line or injuring the fish. The group's invention folds up almost umbrella-style to fit through the hole in the ice. Once the net is in the water, fishermen open it and lodge it against the underside of the ice, trapping the fish. Then they close the net and draw it — and the fish — through the hole.

Building their prototype was important for a number of reasons, says Wilson. "We had a lot of geometries that worked to some degree and then in practice just to get an idea of how much force it would take and how fast it would open," he says. "We could model it on the computer, but ease of use is a personal thing and you can't test it on a computer."

The three students, engineering mechanics majors who all hail from the northern Wisconsin town of Rice Lake, have been shopping their invention around to sporting-goods stores. And a professional fisherman who was on hand at one stop was really interested in the invention, says Passint.

The students are pursuing a patent through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. Had it not been for a Tong prototype grant, they probably wouldn't have built the Ice Net X, he says, because a couple of key parts required expensive special machining.

Laptop EZ Store

Cost also was an issue for business student Peter Norenberg and his partner, mechanical engineering student Grant McNeilly, whose Laptop EZ Store tied for fourth place and received $1,000 in the Schoofs Prize for Creativity.

"Our invention consisted of a fairly basic idea and design, but without a prototype it would have been difficult to explain to others, especially the judges," says Norenberg. Their prototype is a sleek, removable desk-mounted universal laptop support that doubles as a space-efficient storage device. "The Tong grant gave us the resources we needed to make our idea a reality and is a major reason that Innovation Day is such a fun and competitive event," he says.

Ice Light

Mechanical engineering seniors Mike Casper (top) and Anthony Nichol (bottom) were in on the fun. Serious competitors, they arrived wearing an official's black-and-white striped shirt and a hockey jersey underneath their suit coats to debut their Ice Light, a replaceable edge-lighted film that projects logos or advertising within ice sheets in ice arenas. The images quickly and easily turn on and off.

Their prototype included a small-scale ice sheet and a demonstration of their technology. "Our idea is very visual and we could not convey the actual use of the idea without building a scaled-down version of it," says Casper. "No one would fully understand the use of our idea and it would not be as impactful if it was only shown on paper."

They say building the Ice Light ultimately made their design better. "We originally thought we had to lay tiny fiber-optic strands in a horizontal manner using epoxy and metal for our light-passage medium," says Casper. "When researching materials for our prototype, though, we found a company that makes this part (a linear light) and it saved us tons of time. It also made our idea more viable if it went to a full-scale product."

The two, who hope to incorporate the invention into ice arenas — including the university's Kohl Center — around the country, earned second place and $7,000 in the Schoofs Prize for Creativity.

Flexi-Desk — Second Place

Entering a prototype for the creativity competition was optional unless students worked on an invention in class. However, nearly every team built and demonstrated its idea. For many students, constructing what they'd designed played a key role in its final incarnation. "When I did build the desk, things I had over-thought in the design phase were replaced by more obvious solutions," says engineering mechanics student Trenton Kirchdoerfer of his solid-wood portable modular desk, the Flexi-Desk, which earned a second-place, $1,250 Tong Prototype Prize.

Angular Lifting Dolly

Engineering mechanics students John Schmidt, Aaron Bourdon and Jeremy Halfmann (pictured at right) say building the Angular Lifting Dolly reinforced some basic principles: "I learned that tolerances are extremely important," says Schmidt. "A 3/4-inch rod does not fit into a 3/4-inch hole." In addition, their prototype enabled them to see how everything fit together. "Some bolts we could not access due to lack of room or obstructions and this just wasn't obvious until we built it," says Schmidt. "Our final design changed once we built our prototype. We decreased the overall size by 6 inches, from 5.5 feet to 5 feet. Although 5.5 feet seemed reasonable on paper for a hand-truck, once built, it was awkward."

Air-Tuner Drum System

Tuning drums requires a good ear and lots of time and patience, says Joshua Lohr, whose Air-Tuner Drum System tied for fourth place in the Schoofs Prize for Creativity. His invention uses pneumatic actuators to apply equal tension all around the drum head, but Lohr relied heavily on refinements he made to his prototype, testing several ideas with different components. "These were things that were impossible to tell just by the theory whether they would work," he says.

ITAP: The Inflatable Transfer Assistance Platform

Robert Thompson (front right) and his group also went through several design iterations before the one they submitted for the contest. With engineering mechanics classmates Greg Chaganos (front left), Ben Birkenstock (top right) and Dan Swanson (top left), he entered the Inflatable Transfer Assistance Platform, which helps aides safely lift a patient who has fallen. "The first idea was just a basic chair shape, but it became apparent that this would not work," he says. Next we generated prototypes of several different designs, like concentric cylinders and four cubes, to help improve stability. None of these were very successful. We went back to the drawing board and came up with the geometry of the final design. Even after building our entered prototype, several enhancements became visible for future designs."

S-BMX Conversion Kit

Engineering mechanics students Mike Guthrie, Eric Schroeder, Sonny Nimityongskul and Luke Henke headed to a local ski area to try out their prototype, a colorful BMX-style bike fitted with a conversion kit that transformed it into a high-performance ski machine. "Our drawings looked cool-but that's as cool as it gets," says Nimityongskul. "We actually got to build it and ride it, have fun on it and watch our engineering work in action. There are certain things that you can't learn from a drawing that you can feel on the bike when you ride it." With their engaging delivery and high-octane demo video, the group won a best-presentation award and $1,000 in the Schoofs Prize for Creativity.

Infinitely Variable Chain-Driven Transmission

Jason Zuleger's Infinitely Variable Chain-Driven Transmission, a system that uses moveable sprockets rather than the standard derailleur to provide an infinite number of drive ratios for bicycle riders, won third place and $4,000 in the Schoofs Prize for Creativity. As he built his prototype, the mechanical engineering student found that several parts he'd designed were difficult to machine, and that he could use similar hole patterns on different parts. Some parts he redesigned completely so that they were easier to assemble and fasten. "I did reduce a lot of the unnecessary complexity of many of the parts," says Zuleger. "My design had many sliding elements and cams that interacted with each other, and I had a difficult time visualizing their motions. The prototype demonstrated that I had been too aggressive in trying to reduce the cam travel. I learned that I needed to reduce the cam angles to prevent the device from binding."

Portable Computer-Aided Drug Dispenser

A group of biomedical engineering students who entered a portable computer-aided drug dispenser built their prototype in three phases (from left: Luke Harris, Matt Harris, Brandon Verdoorn and Andrea Rozmenoski). "First, it was constructed of only a lure box, bent spring, and cardboard," says senior Luke Harris. "From this basic design, we built an acrylic model of the device. Finally, we built a functional device using a rapid prototyping machine. Each prototype has helped to improve the overall device."

Each prototype also taught his team member, Brandon Verdoorn, how much work it takes to move a product from the idea phase to the prototype and product stage. "I learned that setbacks in the process aren't the end of the world and that acute successes don't guarantee ultimate success," he says. "I think the experience it provides is directly applicable in industry and it really pushes students to their limits of creativity and ingenuity."

Cello Talon

After the competition, judge David Smukowski, an alumnus with degrees in civil and environmental engineering, encouraged the contestants to pursue their passions regardless of whether they won or not. "I think you're all destined for success," he said.

Two students whose invention didn't receive an award plan to take Smukowski's advice. Their Cello Talon, which attaches to the endpiece of a cello and keeps the instrument firmly in one place, was easy to fabricate, said electrical and computer engineering student and cellist Daniel Springmann. "This is a part that we can sell out of our dorm room, so I think we're going to start making these and talk to some distributors," says his partner, John Weyers, a business student.