The SmithVent Experience and a Framework for Collaborative Distributed Design and Fabrication

This paper addresses the collaborative journey of the SmithVent team, a 30-person distributed group of volunteers, who designed, fabricated, and tested a simplified and cost-efficient ventilator over a three-month period, and won the CoVent19 Challenge in July 2020. The paper first presents the SmithVent experience through a co-constructed narrative that describes the team’s approaches to collaborative distributed design and fabrication. The paper next reviews frameworks from five theoretical lenses and then details the process of extracting, synthesizing, and organizing relevant factors to create a new and emergent framework reflective of the SmithVent experience. Lastly, the paper discusses educational implications of the SmithVent experience and proposed framework, emphasizing that the team’s strategies provide a model for educational and industry settings for future collaborative and distributed design and fabrication

A DfX guide for engineering capstone students

This honors project covers two subjects in conjunction with an engineering capstone project to design a self-centering labyrinth seal for centrifugal compressors. The first subject covers writing a guide to Design for X intended for use by future engineering seniors at Smith College. DfX is a holistic design strategy of identifying specific design constraints from downstream aspects of a product development lifecycle (eg. manufacturing, distribution, service) and utilizing them in early development to develop better products, processes and systems. The guide covers the overarching concepts of DfX and delves into Design for Assembly, Design for Manufacturing and Design for Prototyping as examples of DfX guidelines. The guide focuses on strategies to identify and tailor DfX strategies to their specific projects. The second subject is an actual prototype of the labyrinth seal which serves as an addition to the capstone project deliverable as well as an application of the Design for Prototyping concepts covered in the guide. The prototype will be sent to Dresser-Rand\u27s facility in Olean, NY to test on an existing compressor test rig