STEM Education Rocket Launcher Capstone

For my senior Capstone, I worked with a team of 5 of my peers to execute a project commissioned by educators from Northeastern's Building Bridges program. This is an initiative that conducts interactive workshops with local high school students to teach lessons in STEM and introduce young students to the College of Engineering.

One of their popular activities involved a homemade pressurized air launcher for paper rockets, to facilitate interactive lessons on projectile motion and related subjects. This original launcher was highly unreliable, so our capstone group was tasked with building them a solution.

A great deal of effort was put into thoroughly summarizing the project in our executive summary, so rather than trying to paraphrase, there is a link to that document below, available to view in it's entirety.

Capstone Executive Summary.pdf

Download PDF • 5.71MB

On this page I'll speak to my specific contributions within the team, as well as the overall dynamic, and include some relevant images.

Early on, the group spent a lot of time brainstorming together about possible solutions for the launcher, and eventually we decided to all individually bring our plans for a design to our next meeting to choose an overall direction to proceed with. I had developed a relatively complete CAD model to present, which is what we as a group ultimately chose to use as our tentative design. After this point, there was a significant amount of iteration and development in SolidWorks which I was largely responsible for. I designed and made detail drawings of the custom pieces we needed the machinists to help us manufacture, and worked with them through that process. Identifying soldered copper as a viable material in combination with NPT fittings, and identifying the necessary parts to order was also a large part of my contribution.

In many ways, the way the team distributed work fell into place naturally based on people’s strengths and interests. This didn’t always result in a perfectly equal share of work on every individual step, but in general I think we were lucky that there was very little conflict surrounding who wanted to do what. I took the lead over of most of the CAD and mechanical assembly, another member was responsible for the electronics and radio control systems, another was responsible for the extensive mathematical modeling, and the remaining members were highly involved in the testing procedures, written work, and ordering logistics. These were not strict assignments of responsibility by any means, and everyone was definitely able to provide support in these different areas.

The teamwork and dedication from everyone in the group resulted in a highly successful exit to the project. At the end of the term, we were able to present the finished launcher to the clients in-person. They were ecstatic, and ready to put it to use long-term. Our team also received the College of Engineering award for "Best in Track". Overall this was a challenging and rewarding process that I'm very grateful to have bookending my undergraduate career.

As a final touch, we configured the launcher in a pelican case for easy transport, and received this video from our clients only a couple weeks later from their first educational workshop

with it: