A team of student engineers at Sweet Briar College has won third place in the NISH 2009 National Scholar Award for Workplace Innovation & Design.

Partially complete contact block shown with a wedge tool in the foreground.

Sarah Smiley '09, Kristen Green '11, Maxine Emerich '10, MaryAnne Haslow-Hall '11 and Katelyn James '11 earned a $3,000 prize for their Contact Block Assembly Kit, a set of tools designed and fabricated for Lynchburg Sheltered Industries. Along with two other student teams, they worked with LSI as part of their Technology and Society course.

Their goal was to develop aids to enable workers with developmental disabilities to assemble limit switch contact blocks used in industrial pipeline valves. LSI contracts with Flowserve Corp. to produce the blocks.

LSI is a community-based non-profit company that provides employment opportunities and vocational training for disabled workers. It is affiliated with NISH, a national organization that supports agencies like LSI, whose aim is to "work around people's disabilities to make them as productive as they can be," said LSI executive director Cecil Kendrick.

With a top prize of $10,000, NISH's Workplace Innovation & Design contest encourages undergraduate and graduate college students across the country to develop assistive technologies for local agencies. The aim is to make specific tasks accessible to as many employees as possible.

An assembled switch.

The contact blocks consist of a heavy plastic base plate and 16 spring-loaded switches made of small metal parts. Each switch is individually pieced together and bolted to the plate.

It is difficult work for the most dexterous person and of LSI's 89 disabled employees, only five were able to work on the contract. The final step of mounting the switches to the base had to be completed by a non-disabled worker.

The class visited LSI to investigate the steps that gave the workers the most trouble. Because the assembly occurs in three distinct stages, the 15 students in the class split into teams to tackle obstacles to the workers at each phase of production.

All three teams delivered tools that LSI workers can use, including a safety device to prevent hand injuries at the first stage. Team members Margaret Melchor '10, Gina Miller '11, Ingrid Rice '11 and Natasha Weiss '11 devised a simple but clever "air press leveler" that LSI has already implemented.

The metal disk fits onto the air press to level and support the pieces being assembled without having workers' hands near the moving parts during operation of the machine.

Complete left assembly base.

Team members Sarah Jennings '11, Amanda Baker '09, Sara Sheppard '10, Meredith Newman '09, Cassidy Jones '11 and Ellie Craddock '11 designed left and right "nest" assemblies in which the pieces are stacked and held stable. The nests orient the pieces in order of assembly and are used in conjunction with an illustrated mat for step-by-step instruction.

They modified a Destaco clamp and attached it to the nest bases to hold down the spring while a cotter pin is inserted to hold everything together. Finally, they design a steel-tipped cotter pin bender, because workers had trouble bending the pin to lock it in place.

"It's a pretty slick little fixture," Kendrick said after testing the left and right assemblers.

LSI previously had four employees who could consistently build the switches. Floor supervisor Gail Hubbard, who trains the workers, anticipates doubling or tripling that number once the news tools are delivered following some minor modifications.

The designs that won the award address the final stage of assembly. The kit includes a tool that crimps and aligns two stacked aluminum "fins" attached to the switch frames and left and right wedge tools that enable workers to hold and bolt the finished switches to the base plate. They also designed a base holder that proved unnecessary after final testing.

During a March visit to LSI to demonstrate the crimper and wedge tools, the team met Chris. Two days earlier, he had been trained for the first time on the base plate assembly. He explained he couldn't crimp the fins or hold back the springs to provide an unobstructed path for the bolts that anchor the switch to the plate.

The fin crimper tool aligns holes and shapes the aluminum fin to the switch frame in an easy motion.

"We said, 'Cool, because that's what we fixed for you,' " Emerich, a junior engineering major, recalled.

Chris suggested modifications, such as replacing the metal crimper handle with rubber. He was so excited with how well the tools worked, though, he didn't want to return the prototypes so the improvements could be made.

Kendrick noted that the experience was a boost to all of the employees who tested and responded to the students' designs. "It was like a real production, manufacturing-type of situation, with the folks on the floor working with the engineers," he said. "We had that relationship with the students. It was really good."

The workers are paid by the piece, so having tools to speed production and open more opportunities to them increases their pay along with their pride, Hubbard pointed out. "To be able to do this job means a lot to them," she said. "They want to please and it's more money in their pockets."

Knowing their designs worked and seeing Chris' reaction when it did was the most satisfying part for senior Sarah Smiley. That, and having ownership of the process. "It was our project," she said. "We made our schedule, we held our meetings and we held each other accountable."

More information about SBC Engineering is available at http://www.engineering.sbc.edu/, including details on a summer engineering design course for high school women that offers college credit.