’Tis the season of giving . . . and engineering

HOUSTON – (Dec. 20, 2023) – The holiday season kicked off early this year for a Rice University staff member who received a welcome and much-needed gift from a team of freshman engineering students.

Sophia Burbano, Yung-Cheng Ko, Brad Mahung and Harry Zhu spent the past semester working on a portable filming studio for Brandon Martin, Rice’s senior videographer, as part of their Intro to Engineering Design coursework. Starting from a standard ready-made utility cart, the team designed and tested an enhanced prototype that incorporates lighting and microphone stands as well as storage compartments for lenses, cameras and other equipment.

“We found that similar carts with the integrated light and audio stands and modular systems cost upwards of $2,000 to $3,000,” Mahung said. “We decided to go with a lot of 3D printed components, which allowed us to create the same sort of design, while keeping the overall weight and the cost of the product down.

“The storage compartments and the 3D printed frame with the stands are two of the main innovations that we added, along with some weather proofing and a few other features added along the way.”

On its first real-world trial run, the cart, dubbed Flash Studio, assisted Martin for a video shoot with Rice President Reginald DesRoches.

“We’re very proud of that,” Mahung said.

The project required that students use engineering software to design and assess the performance of different elements of the prototype.

“We had to make sure our mechanism could support the weight of the equipment properly,” Zhu said, recounting how the team ran stress tests on each individual piece to figure out what reinforcements or adjustments were needed.

Zhu admitted the process also forced him to adjust.

“Well, honestly, before I entered the team and this class, I knew literally nothing about 3D printing and laser cutting,” he said. “But taking this class, I spent time and effort learning this new stuff.”

The kind of project-driven teamwork required in the course ensures that students develop not only computational and equipment manipulation skills, but also time- and task-management know-how. For Ko, communication and planning were skills he felt he improved the most as a result of working on the project.

“I had never worked with a team at this pace, which is rather fast moving,” Ko said. “It really required thorough and clear communication throughout the project.”

For Burbano, one of the most rewarding aspects of the project was getting to work in Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK).

“It’s just amazing to be surrounded by all of these tools ⎯ there’s this whole machine shop upstairs,” Burbano said. “I would say I’ve touched maybe 10% of it. I really want to be able to hone my skills with all of those machines out there. I want to be able to use them to build more real-world solutions to real-world problems.”

The idea for the project came from a conversation Martin had with Rice senior (now alumnus) Chris Heuser about the challenges of carrying gear to and from filming locations. Among other things, Martin conveyed that means of transport for audiovisual equipment don’t typically have integrated features specifically designed to cut down the labor of setting it up and breaking it down. Heuser recognized that designing and building a solution to address this would be a great learning opportunity for students in an introductory engineering course, so he developed a project proposal and pitched it to the OEDK.

“We’re always looking for real life projects for our students to tackle,” said Kevin Holmes, a Rice lecturer who taught this year’s Intro to Engineering Design. “This particular team did a lot around iterations ⎯ there was a lot of very positive trial-and-error work on the design aspect, which speaks to what we want students to get out of the class.”

Although Martin has told many a story about engineering students’ projects in his 12 years on the job, he was never in the story himself ⎯ until now.

“It’s one thing to film these projects every year, but to be a part of the other side and be a client … I learned a lot of appreciation for what our students at Rice can do: They’re learning, they’re giving back to Houstonians and clients all around the community,” Martin said.

For Martin, the experience really helped drive home a sense of appreciation for the Rice community and its culture of care.

“It’s a great place to work just because there are so many nice people here that do stuff like this,” he said.

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This release can be found online at news.rice.edu.

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

Video is available at:

https://youtu.be/YIDJ36tSq04
Video by Brandon Martin/Rice University

Image downloads:

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2023/12/231130_team-flash-studio-freshmen-engineering-design_Martin-74-Enhanced-NR.jpeg CAPTION: Sophia Burbano (from left), Harry Zhu, Brandon Martin, Brad Mahung and Yung-Cheng Ko at the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen. (Credit: Rice University)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2023/12/PXL_20231201_192446342.jpeg
CAPTION: On its first real-world trial run, the cart, dubbed Flash Studio, assisted Martin for a video shoot with Rice President Reginald DesRoches. (Photo by Brandon Martin/Rice University)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2023/12/231130_team-flash-studio-freshmen-engineering-design_Martin-25-Enhanced-NR.jpeg (Photo by Brandon Martin/Rice University)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2023/12/231130_team-flash-studio-freshmen-engineering-design_Martin-10-Enhanced-NR.jpg (Photo by Brandon Martin/Rice University)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2023/12/231207_team-flash-studio_martin-18.jpg
CAPTION: Sophia Burbano (from left), Harry Zhu, Brad Mahung, Yung-Cheng Ko and Kevin Holmes. (Photo by Brandon Martin/Rice University)

Links:

Department of Computer Science: https://csweb.rice.edu/

Department of Materials Science and Nanoengineering: https://msne.rice.edu/

Department of Mathematics: https://mathweb.rice.edu/

Department of Mechanical Engineering:https://mech.rice.edu/

Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen: http://oedk.rice.edu

George R. Brown School of Engineering: https://engineering.rice.edu

About Rice:

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of architecture, business, continuing studies, engineering, humanities, music, natural sciences and social sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 4,574 undergraduates and 3,982 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction, No. 2 for best-run colleges and No. 12 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.