2021 ASPE Student Challenge

Preliminary Plan
November 1-5, 2021 | Minneapolis, MN 
–Student Challenge Power Point Download
–Student Challenge Preliminary Grading Rubric

Students are provided (Aug 25, 2021) with:

NewWayXY air-bearing (10 mm² travel range) with Heidenhain LIKgo line scales – 78 nm resolution
Motus Mechanical Flexure – based scribe tool (Z ) mechanism with feedback sensing using Lion Capacitance probe Chardon Tool Diamond scribing tool.
Sample substrates – 20 x 20 mm Copper coated Si wafer  held on a vacuum chuck •Open Hardware and LabVIEW Software to control the stages and flexure mechanism.
CPM, UNC Charlotte  developed 16 bit DAQ with 3 Channel current amplifiers to operate voice coil actuators Consulting sessions with experts in the various fields will be provided. – between Sep 1 & Nov 1.
Means to gage progress at the school.
Means to be able to ship a few samples to Zeiss Industrial Metrology – before progress report  in Oct 1st.
Means to either measure the final samples at the conference or ship 2 weeks before Nov 1st to the Zeiss.
At the conference, room with meals and drinks.
Recognition to all, and monetary prices to the top 3 schools ($4 , $2 and $1 Ks)
Grading rubric will allow for machine improvements but points are only given for manufacturing processes & results.
School needs access to:
Clean/dry air (around 80 psi).
National Instruments myRIO Controller.

Key Dates:
 
June 1
Open Registration – students to fill up online form – by invitation only.
Aug 25  
Hardware arrives at schools. Start challenge.
Sep 24
Ship one sample before this date to the location provided for measurements.
Oct 1
Present remotely their preliminary results to judges, they will provide feedback.
Oct 15
Ship 2 final samples by Oct 15 to the location provided for measurements.  Note: this step only required with ASPE virtual.
Virtual*
Oct 21  
Measurement Facility will provide results. Note: this step only required with ASPE virtual.
Virtual*
Oct 22
Submit final report.
Nov 1
During the ASPE annual conference, students will manufacture a couple of gratings and will have access to a measurement machine. 
Live+
Nov 2
Students will present their results to the judges – 15 minutes presentation.

Notes:
* If at least 3 students attend the conference, they do not have to ship final sample by Oct 15.
+ will only for the teams that have 3 students at the conference.

Luis A. Aguirre – 3M Company
Kumar Arumugam – NIST
Dipankar Behara – UT Austin
Paul Brackman – Zeiss 
Raymond C. Cady – Corning
Jacob Cole – UNC Charlotte 
Liam G Connolly – UT Austin
Tim Dalrymple
Drew Devitt – New Way Bearings
Chunjie Fan – UNC Charlotte
Mark T. Kosmowski – Electro-Scientific Industries, Inc.,
Mark Schmitt
Don Martin – Martin Mason LLC 
Senajith Bandara Rekawa – Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories
Nilabh Roy – Canon Nanotechnologies
Stuart Smith – UNC Charlotte
Alex Sohn – Facebook Reality Labs
Trevor Stolber – 3M company

2020 ASPE Student Challenge
The ASPE Student Challenge is an annual precision engineering student competition inviting students from engineering and technical disciplines to participate in designing & building a precision mechanical system and showcase their precision engineering efforts/skills during the competition at the conference. The challenge typically tests the student teams on various aspects of precision engineering including precision machine element design, mechatronics, controls, metrology and optics & provides the students, a glimpse into the design & development of a precision system. The goal of the 2020 Student challenge is to build a scribe tool controller that can be integrated with an XY scanning platform to produce a mechanical ruling system. Each team will be required to design, prototype, and characterize performance of the scribe tool controller This revised goal has become necessary to fit into the virtual conference format due to the corona virus pandemic. The parts will be sent to the professor to distribute as desired. In the case the school lab is closed, students could divide and work on completing the assembly and testing at home.This replaces the original goal that was to generate a grating pattern with 50 lines per millimeter over a minimum 5 mm x 3 mm substrate area (a total of 150 to 250 lines) using the scribe tool controller mounted into the XY stage at the conference. This will be deferred until the next, in-person, annual meeting, hopefully in 2021.Hardware used for the construction and testing of the probe can only be constructed from the resources supplied to each team. A list of all resources provided to each team is provided in the Detailed Description & BOM.Grading[2] for the challenge will be based on 1) design novelty (typically fewer mechanical elements, small footprint are desired) of the instrument (100 pts), 2) a comprehensive uncertainty budget (200 pts), 3) a design presentation (100 pts), and 4) a presentation with accompanying video (limited to less than 15 minutes) during the conference (600 pts). The goals of mechanical testing are to determine the performance of the scribe probe under closed loop control.
Detailed Description.
Rubric
CAD parts and BOM.
Sponsorship letter.
ASPE 35th Annual Meeting Student Challenge
Meet the 2020 Student Challenge Team