OSU agricultural engineering students take top national honors

The top honors were presented to the students in the AGCO National Student Design Competition held during the annual meeting of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers in Minneapolis, Minn.

Clinton Cosgrove of Arpelar, Lance Klement of Durant, Matthew Lemmons of Drumright and Kevin Taylor of Tulsa, all OSU Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering (BAE) majors, redesigned and built the prototype tree shear as part a year-long senior design class, the capstone course for BAE students.

The four OSU students received certificates of recognition and desk plaques, plus they will split $1,250 in prize money. Their academic department also will receive a $300 scholarship and a wall plaque that includes the names of the design team and their faculty adviser, Paul Weckler, an OSU associate professor of biosystems and agricultural engineering who teaches the two-semester capstone course.

“Their achievement this year is another example of a win-win-win situation for our students, OSU’s reputation and for a small manufacturing business in rural Oklahoma,” Weckler said.

The BAE senior design class gives students an opportunity to work on a real product, helping an actual company solve one its business concerns.

“These four young men redesigned a tree shear for Vassar Manufacturing Company of Perkins, who sponsored the project,” Weckler said.

Additional financial support came from the OSU New Product Development Center. The center promotes partnerships between small manufacturers and university-based teams to develop and commercialize the manufacturer’s new product concepts.

“Students who take this class,” Weckler said, “essentially complete their first engineering job assignment. They have to listen to a real client’s need and then find a way to fulfill that need. In the process they have to worry about such things as staying within budget and on schedule, securing materials and manufacturing that prototype, and maintaining regular contact with the client for consultation and progress updates.”

In short, everything required of them as professional engineers on their first job.

“About the only difference between this class and a real job is that if you make a mistake in the real world, you can get fired,” Weckler said. “If you make a mistake in class, we can help correct it and turn it into a positive learning experience.”

The tree shear is a device that can be mounted on tractors or skid loaders, enabling farmers and ranchers to rid pastures of up to 10-inch cedar trees, a major invasive species in vast areas of the great plain states. Vassar’s original shear, in production for about 15-years, allowed the tree to be cut off at ground level. The redesign also allows the device to make 90-degree angle cuts so that the tree branches can be trimmed.

Jack Vassar, president of Vassar Manufacturing Company, was generous with his praise for the students and their new design.

“The students were great,” Vassar said. “They would come down and really get into this.  We probably met with them 10 or 12 times to discuss their work: they were very enthusiastic.”

Vassar said he was well pleased with the final product.

“I think it looks great,” he said. “This is not the first thing that we’ve had done up here (at OSU), but this one really does have some sex appeal. I think it will sell.”

Weckler said the BAE senior design class focuses on projects for Oklahoma companies, many of them small, rural businesses that do not have access to commercial consulting firms.

Class projects encompass everything from ways to improve a manufacturing process or determining the causes of a particular problem, to designing machinery that can become a new product line.

Weckler said student projects have resulted in a definite market advantages for Oklahoma companies over the years, and even new jobs in and for rural communities.

The purpose of the National Student Design Competition, sponsored by AGCO, a global agricultural machinery company headquartered in Georgia, is to encourage undergraduate students in the basic design of an engineering project useful to agriculture, and to provide an arena of professionalism in which the student can experience peer recognition of a well conceived and executed design project.

###

REPORTER/MEDIA CONTACT:
Ron Dahlgren
Agricultural Communications Services
144 Agriculture North
Oklahoma State University
Stillwater, OK 74078
Phone: 405-744-3737
Fax: 405-744-5739
E-Mail: ron.dahlgren@okstate.edu