Senior Year Capstone

In my senior year as a mechanical engineering student at the University of Vermont, I completed my Senior Experience in Engineering Design (SEED) project. I worked with my team members Jay Montagna, Eli Pay, and Ryan Igo to design and produce a circuit board testing fixture for our client, Liquid Measurement Systems (LMS). Their fuel probes have a circuit board that they could only run thermal tests on while they are in their final assembly. If they fail the thermal test, LMS had to disassemble the fuel probe housing, disconnect and remove the circuit board, repair and replace any components, reassemble the fuel probe, and run the thermal test again. With the fixture that we designed, the circuit boards are able to be tested independently, saving many man hours and eliminating the interruptions in their production cycle.

Design Requirements

The final design needed to meet a few constraints to meet the client’s needs. First, the fixture must provide reliable electrical connections between the PCBA and LMS. This will allow the final design to make proper connections to LMS’s testing equipment which simulates various fuel scenarios during the thermal cycle testing. The fixture must also be able to withstand stresses of the thermal cycling test over many years without degrading. The final design should function for many years, which means it will have to be exposed to the same extreme thermal conditions that the PCBs are tested in. The final design must also be electrostatically safe. Since the fixture will be interfacing with electronic components which may carry a static charge, the fixture should either discharge all static electricity to a ground
connection or dissipate the static energy. This ensures the safety of the technicians moving the fixture and the safety of LMS’s test equipment from rogue static shocks. Finally, the design must be user-friendly. This means the fixture must be light enough to be easily moved and the PCBs should be quickly removed and replaced with new PCBs to ensure little down time between thermal cycles.

Project Poster

The poster below was presented during UVM’s Senior Design Night on April 24th, 2025.