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PROVO — An all-women’s manufacturing team from Brigham Young University is competing in a national competition as one of five finalists. They are the only women competing.
The competition is being funded by Fluke Corp. as a way for the students to showcase their “technical and presentation skills, innovation and creativity.”
“We think it is pretty cool. It’s great that we are kind of promoting women in STEM fields. That is one of the things we are trying to push with our club,” BYU team member Shuan Chavarria said.
Their project is called friction bit joining. In layman's terms, they figured out a way to bond dissimilar metals together.
“It’s pretty important in the automotive industry because two dissimilar metals don't weld together that well, so this way of joining them will really help the automotive industry,” team member Janel Mayfield said.
To enter the contest, the team was required to submit its idea of friction bit joining to the Fluke Connect Student Contest and show how it would use Fluke tools to make the plan work. Fluke told the BYU women they were a finalist just three weeks ago, sent them some tools and gave them the go-ahead to get started.
It's pretty important in the automotive industry because two dissimilar metals don't weld together that well, so this way of joining them will really help the automotive industry.
–Janel Mayfield, team member
The women said they have used every minute they could for the project, adding that it is impossible to add up all the hours.
One of the tools they were given measures heat.
“So what we did with the thermal imager,” added Chavarria, “is use it as we ran the machine that was creating the joint so we could read the temperature it was producing.”
The team also programmed a machine that spins extremely fast and sandwiches the two metals together using heat and pressure. In the end, they were able to bond steel to aluminum with a strong joint.
Their adviser, Eric Mckell, said he had very little to do with the project.
“I didn't have to do very much. They were self-confident and knew what they needed to do and were able to figure out how to get things going and analyze their results.”
If they win, Fluke will give the BYU department $3,500 worth of new tools and fly the women to Seattle to visit Fluke headquarters.
The competition isn't the end for this team; it also started the first-ever Students Chapter of Women in Manufacturing. The women said they started the chapter because they were sick of being told they wouldn’t do anything with their degree. So they wanted to find a way for all the women in their program to stick together and help each other graduate.
The competition ends tonight, and 25 percent of the team's total points come from a community vote.
If you would like to vote go here.
