Hands-on, real world experience is invaluable to an engineering student according to Matt Doyle, marketing and communications manager for Boise-based engineering company iO DuPont, Inc.
A team of four University of Idaho engineering senior design students is receiving this type of exposure as it continues work on the students’ capstone project — a collaboration with iO DuPont on its most recent technological advancement, the Infinity Drive.
Doyle said the Infinity Drive is commonly known as an infinitely variable transmission (IVT) in the mechanical engineering world. He said the drive is still in the prototype stage, and the founder of the company, Tony DuPont, began the project with bicycles in mind.
“So this device would sit in between the pedals on a bicycle,” Doyle said. “It would be a replacement — an innovation — in the way a bicycle can shift. The way it can change gears would be smoother . . . so instead of a big step from first gear to second gear, it would be more gradual, like turning a volume knob.”
When word of the project got out, Doyle said several different industries claimed they could use the drive for various innovations.
“So the team at the University of Idaho … is helping us improve it so we can go out to all these different industries and say ‘Hey, look what we’ve got,'” Doyle said.
Doug Kippes, a UI biological and agricultural engineering (BAE) student working on the project, said the team’s task is to study the transmission and prove a concept to ensure it will do what’s been promised.
“(The transmission) is scalable and can be used in a ton of different applications,” Kippes said. “. . . The idea is that we implement it into the precision agriculture industry.”
Kippes said in precision agriculture a seed can be planted exactly where it’s needed, and the seed’s rate of application can also be adjusted across the field.
“Basically, what (the transmission) promises to do is save farmers money by reducing their inputs and maximizing their field production,” he said.
Kara Kleppen, another UI senior in BAE and team member, said she chose the project because of its application to agriculture.
Kippes said he chose to work on the Infinity Drive for similar reasons.
He said he grew up farming in Idaho and was interested in the mechanical side of it, as well as the challenge.
“Precision agriculture is something that’s developing, and to be a part of it is really cool,” Kippes said
Team member and UI mechanical engineering senior Zack Wuthrich said he decided on this particular project due to its machine design and small business entrepreneurial aspects.
Kendra Hildreth, another UI mechanical engineering senior and teammate, said the project was intriguing because it’s something DuPont came up with as a product of the education he received at UI.
“It was something I could wrap my brain around, so I wanted to learn more about it and do what I could to make it better,” Hildreth said.
Kippes said things have changed as the team has encountered new challenges during the year-long project.
Wuthrich said their first step was to understand exactly what DuPont had invented.
“Even he didn’t understand fully what was going on, so we’re providing him with our take on it,” Wuthrich said. “(DuPont) is gathering as many views as he can to fully understand how it works.”
The team is currently working on the planter unit, Kippes said.
“We’re actually going to put the prototype on this test bed and do some testing with it,” he said. “We want to analyze the results and provide our client with something that can be presented to investors. Once we get this thing to work and can actually show people how it works, it’s going to take off.”
Kippes said there’s a possibility it might be an ongoing project with students in the future, but that this particular group hopes to deliver results by the end of April at an exposition, via a written report and professional presentation.
Overall, Wuthrich said the project has served as a transitional step between the bookwork the team’s completed throughout the past three years of school and the real-world experiences they’ll face as engineers.
Hildreth said her capstone experience has been an eye-opener.
“It teaches you how to actually be an engineer,” she said. “It teaches you how to go from ‘this is the math we do’ and ‘this is why we do it.'”
Working on the project has also taught the students non-academic skills such as team work and proper communication with clients, Kleppen said.
Doyle said more than anything, iO DuPont — made up mostly of UI alumni — looks at it as a way to give back to the university.
“In a way, we’re giving just as much as we’re receiving,” he said.