Achievement

For the second year in a row, a pair of Rensselaer students took first place at the annual Student Manufacturing Design Competition held by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). IGERT Trainee Casey Hoffman and Jaron Kuppers won top honors in the national competition for their innovative Specialized Elastomeric Tooling (SET) process. The SET process offers a new method for curing advanced composites, which are highly customizable materials frequently used in a range of critically important applications from aircraft to windmill blades to biomedical devices. The new process is significantly less expensive and requires 500 to 1,000 times less energy than the conventional curing method used around the globe. The competition was held in mid-October at the 2010 ASME International Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference in Erie, Pa.