On to the flow bench

Good afternoon everyone!  It's Matt here, updating you guys on the progress we've made this week.  The data acquisition system (DAQ) is completed and ready to be hooked up to some cars.  The group is now moving on towards designing the flow bench that we'll use to test engine conditions.  

A few of the key issues we'll face are:

• Figuring out how to mist oil properly into the flow bench
• Finding alternatives to motor oil that still have similar density and viscosity but aren't flammable.
• Ergonomic concerns.
• Simulating the engine air temperature. 

On the website side of things, we've included a link to our project timeline so everyone who's watching can keep track of our actual progress and where we should be.  The timeline itself is quite aggressive, but we have sponsors who have been promised results!

Look for a new sponsor on the web page to be showing up this week.  I've just got to re-size an image and make a blurb about the company.  As always, we're very thankful to our sponsors, it's your generous donations that allow us to continue to work on our capstone!

DAQ and Engineering Expo

It's been a few weeks since we've updated the blog, but our team has made some pretty decent progress since the blog was first created.  So let's get our avid readers up to date on what the team is doing with pictures and all.



The website is completely functional (if you haven't seen it, you should check it out)

The data aquisition system is about 70% complete, below is a picture of the work in progress

A few weeks ago our team went to the Umaine Engineering Expo to show some freshman engineering students what a senior capstone can possibly entail, and talked a bit about our project.  We brought along a tri-fold with the basic concepts involved in our project.  The tri-fold was designed by Jon and his girlfriend.  Once again picture below

That's just a quick update for now.  More to come soon!

First Progress Update

It's 1 month into the school year at the University of Maine and the oil-vapor separator team, has begun acquiring parts for our data acquisition system, and our web page is up and running.  Once we have all of the parts for our data acquisition system then we can begin testing vehicles and getting some numbers to work with.  Stay tuned for more posts and pictures!