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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
“BEST IDEA” CONTEST WINNERS ANNOUNCED.
Award presentation to be webcast live on June 14.
A team of three materials engineering students at New Mexico Tech has won the $15,000 top prize in the clad metal “Best Idea Contest 2009.” The winners will receive their award at a presentation ceremony on June 14 at New Mexico Tech, Socorro, New Mexico.
Winners of the second prize ($7000), from City College of New York, and
third prize ($3000), from Iowa State University, will also attend the awards
ceremony which will be webcast.
The contest was sponsored by Engineered Materials Solutions (EMS, Attleboro,
MA) and Wickeder Westfalenstahl GmbH (Wickede an der Ruhr, Germany), and
by the ASM Materials Education Foundation.
The winning entry, “Magnesium Clad Titanium Acoustical Speaker Cones,” was submitted by Marcus Chavez (Los Lunas, NM), Corey Gibson (Los Lunas, NM) and Brendan Nation (Marysville, WA), all seniors at New Mexico Tech (officially named New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology). The students developed their entry concept as the mini-project in their capstone Senior Design class taught by Prof. Deidre Hirshfeld.
The team devoted a month of intense work to their mini-project. First, they determined that clad metals were not being used by any manufacturer for high-end loudspeaker cones. After examining appropriate materials characteristics, a literature search revealed that titanium and magnesium are viable as a clad metal but not currently being manufactured. The team then examined other possible metals combinations and compared cost estimates of their magnesium clad titanium to materials in use for high end speaker cones. They realized that their clad materials design concept would enable them to eliminate the complex two material geometry typically used in high-end speaker cone fabrication. As Brendan Nation said, “Our project involves simple manufacturing and complex engineering. Our design turns it into a flat metal geometry, so to speak.”
“This winning project underlines some of the key benefits clad metals can offer – improved performance combined with manufacturing simplification,” said Dr. Chuck Tuffile, New Product Development Manager at EMS, and one of the judges of the contest. “Clad metals provide design engineers with characteristics that cannot be obtained in a single metal. As all of the contest entrants have demonstrated, the combinations of metals that can be clad provide designers with opportunities not available any other way.”
The awards presentation webcast will take place live on Monday, June 14 at 11:00 AM EDT. It will be available at: http://breeze.nmt.edu/supcomp09/ to computer users with high speed internet connections. Viewers will be able to enter text messages to ask questions and will be able to hear the answers.
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Clad Metal “Best Idea Contest 2009” winners:
1st place $15,000, New Mexico Tech
Team of Marcus Chavez, Cory Gibson and Brendan Nation for “Magnesium
Clad Titanium Acoustical Speaker Cones.”
2nd place $7,000, City College of New York
Team of Perry Randazzo, Marina Ovtchinnikova, Calista Ho for “Parabolic
Reflective Louvres to Focus Solar Radiation onto Bimetal Coils.”
3rd place $3,000, Iowa State University
Team of John Solomon, Mitch Rock, Luke Klosterman for “High
Nickel Chrome Alloy Clad to HSLA for Corrosion Protection of Nurse Tanks.”
The Wickeder Group companies, headquartered in Wickede an der Ruhr, Germany, are world leaders in the development and production of clad metals by cold roll bonding.
For more information please contact:
Mr. Gerald Johnson
Mobile phone: +1 2484702875
Email: geraldjohnson2@aol.com