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06 Sustainability · UW

Beach Cleaning Device

2022
Lede

First senior capstone. A sand-sifter for picking microplastics out of beaches.


Detail

My first big mechanical project. A wheeled rig that scoops sand, separates particles smaller than a threshold, and dumps the rest back. Got built, got tested on a real beach, sort of worked. The interesting part was less the mechanism and more learning that field testing exposes every assumption you made in CAD.

Stack
  • CAD
  • Mechanical prototyping
  • Field testing