Scc Student Engineers Crush The Competition

It’s not surprising that college students, who are careful to avoid dehydration, have a knack for disposing of aluminum cans.

But few can crush them with the efficiency and satisfaction of the students of Room 121 in the Spokane Community College main building.

Here, they feed hapless empties into the Bigfoot Press, an award-winning hydraulic crushing device that students in the SCC fluid power program built.

With its blue warning light flashing overhead, Bigfoot’s piston swiftly mashes a can into a half-inch disk and spits it out.

Bigfoot is more than a recycling animal. It’s a national collegiate winner for engineering design, which included a $5,000 prize.

“I thought it was pretty crazy, that it would never work,” said Steve Stromberger, a second-year SCC student out of Freeman High School. “Then it started crushing cans, and wow! It does work.”

Stromberger was one of six students who designed and built the 220-pound machine for the Fluid Power Distributors Association annual engineering contest. Concluding a two-year judging process, the New Jersey-based association declared Bigfoot the national winner last month.

SCC students - Carl Adair, Coree Bitter, Shane Bryant, Tom Lawler, Bart Pulliam and Stromberger - beat out entries from several four-year engineering programs including Iowa State University, Oklahoma State University and Western Washington University.

Another two dozen teachers and students volunteered time and materials for the SCC effort, limiting the cost of the machine to $200.

“I pride myself in building stuff out of junk,” said John Curran, the fluid power electronics instructor who guided the students’ efforts.

But the genius of Bigfoot is not its cost - it’s the size and weight.

Using computer circuits and a rare air-over-oil technology, students compressed air into a cylinder of oil to raise Bigfoot’s pressure to 320 pounds per square inch, more than enough to crumple aluminum and tin. By using air to help power the piston, the machine does not need a heavy pump or basin typically used in oil-based hydraulics.

To qualify for the national award, Bigfoot had to fit into a 4-foot box and not exceed 250 pounds, Curran said.

“If you had a factory full of these pressing out widgets, you could do the job with half as much power and money,” he said.

Curran and a pair of students will travel later this month to pick up the prize at the association’s annual convention in Puerto Rico. The $5,000 will be invested for student scholarships in SCC’s fluid power program.

In March, two other students will fly to Chicago to display Bigfoot at the National Plant Engineers and Management Conference.

Fluid power students are accustomed to the attention. With only 13 such college programs operating nationwide, companies are offering jobs to fluid power students four months before they graduate, said department chairman Bob Williams. All of his 66 students will get jobs if they want them, Williams said. First-year salaries can be as high as $35,000.

“There’s a shortage of technicians,” said Kerry Ropelato, recruiter for Parker Hannifin, an Ogden, Utah, manufacturer that has hired six SCC fluid power students in the past year. “If they come after taking their first-year theory classes, we can work with them, train them.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo