The Project
Sponsored by Los Alamos National Laboratories, my BYU capstone team of 5 engineers designed, built, and tested an electromechanical locking shipping container. The project was a non-confidential back-burner project that the national lab had been sitting on. The main requirements specified a cylindrical shape, air-tight seal, and a keypad to unlock the container. The rest of the design was up to us. By sponsoring some college seniors, we were able to produce a great design, and functioning prototype.
Team members: Michael Ottesen, Spencer Baker, Cody Going, Grace Hymas, and Jonathan Peterson. Coach: Jake Merrell
The Design
With a limited budget and short deadline, we decided to outsource as many parts as possible. With that in mind, many parts were purchased to be interfaced with the container such as the drum, the keypad, and the handles. There were other parts that needed to be engineered ourselves such as the locking mechanism and lid adapter brackets. By carefully selecting where to spend our time designing parts, we were successful in interfacing all parts into a working container.
Lid adapter design process
One task I headed was designing and implementing some way to fasten the lid to the container. I came up with a sheet metal bracket that is welded to the side of the steel drum. I began with brainstorming as many solutions as I could think of. I weighed each option and decided on a bracket that would attach to the side of the drum. Using this concept, I drew up several sketches of what this part may look like, and created paper prototypes to understand the idea. I decided that creating the part out of sheet metal was a simple solution that kept the production at low cost. Once the paper prototype looked appropriate, I used computer aided design (CAD) to create a virtual prototype. The CAD model was used to cut the metal via waterjet, then the brackets were bent to shape, welded onto the container, and painted. Images outlining this design process are shown below.
