What Are Some Interesting Engineering Projects for Spare Time?

[Tomas]

Hello I'm currently first year mechanical engineering student and I have some spare time. I want to take on a project of some sorts that would be interesting and maybe relevant to my degree or general theme of engineering. I was wondering if anyone could suggest or recommend something and maybe drop some links of people doing something with detailed descriptions and kind of step by step analysis. Examples of a project I would be interested in doing is something like building your own remote control car or something similar.

Thank you for all of your feedback.

 

[berkeman]

Hello I'm currently first year mechanical engineering student and I have some spare time. I want to take on a project of some sorts that would be interesting and maybe relevant to my degree or general theme of engineering. I was wondering if anyone could suggest or recommend something and maybe drop some links of people doing something with detailed descriptions and kind of step by step analysis. Examples of a project I would be interested in doing is something like building your own remote control car or something similar.

Thank you for all of your feedback.

Welcome to the PF.

You should get a ton of ideas from Make Magazine: http://makezine.com/

What kind of tools do you have at your disposal? Drill press, lathe, soldering tools, router, etc?

 

[Tomas]

I have the most common hand tools and drills all that stuff. And i can get access to all sorts of machines at the university.

 

[Shaun_W]

A solar heater.

 

[ViperSRT3g]

A Hydrogen Gas Generator. Then you can work out the kinks in making Hydrogen more safe and easily portable for everyday use. Or you can just make an HHO generator and use that as a plasma cutter lol.

 

[Meizirkki]

Nikola Tesla's bladeless turbine has been claimed to reach efficiencies of over 95%. Nobody has ever come close.

Try to design and build one with such efficiency, they are easy and inexpensive to make so if you do manage to successfully design one just patent your solution and live off the royalties forever.

 

[berkeman]

I saw this on the TV news last night -- solar-powered desalination plants for making potable water:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_desalination

Apparently there is one being proposed for here in Northern California right now...