2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Many students entering senior design have never taken a fluid power course or worked with pneumatic circuits in any way. Most have only taken an introductory Fluid Dynamics course, and even those who have taken a fluid power course may not have any hands-on experience designing, testing, or controlling actual pneumatic circuits. However, there is a wealth of interesting and challenging design projects involving pneumatic circuits that can lead to rewarding careers in automation and controls. If left unfilled, this gap between student skill sets and project requirements will significantly limit what students can achieve on a design project and may prevent students from working on these types of projects altogether. This paper describes the development of a pneumatic bread board and associated “sandbox” for students in a mechanical engineering capstone design course. The pneumatic bread board, similar to an electronic bread board, offers students the opportunity to build pneumatic circuits while the “sandbox” contains all of the common materials needed for these circuits. Both allow students to build both common circuits to develop core knowledge, as well as custom circuits specific to their capstone design project. When building common pneumatic circuits, students are guided by instructor-developed tutorials with minimal, on-demand help from trained teaching assistants. These common circuits help students to develop lower levels of learning as described on Bloom’s taxonomy, namely knowledge, comprehension, and application. While building these common circuits and developing their basic knowledge, students are also encouraged to explore and develop solutions to the open-ended problems they are encountering in their capstone design projects. By providing the opportunity and encouraging this side-by-side development, students can reach the higher levels on Bloom’s taxonomy, those of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The bread board and “sandbox” design presented here was developed under faculty guidance as a senior design project, but ultimately, both will be continually used by future capstone design students who can provide feedback for continuous improvement and, if successful, provide a foundation for future hands-on pedagogical prototyping aids.