ALEXANDER CITY, Ala. – Tanner Floyd and Tristan Carisch, two Central Alabama Community College (CACC) machine shop students, finished in second place at the inaugural Auburn University Interdisciplinary Center for Advanced Manufacturing Systems (ICAMS) competition.
The students were tasked with designing and building a propeller for a submarine.
The competition objective required the blades of the submarine propeller rotate on a shaft and the assembly be fabricated using one of the additive manufacturing processes, fused filament fabrication, using a Prusa 3D printer.
CACC’s machining team was comprised of Carisch and Floyd along with CACC faculty members Pat Murphy and Josh Nelson.
Floyd and Carisch were the only community college students who participated in the competition. The other nine teams were made up of of 31 Auburn Engineering students.
“I am so proud of Tristan and Tanner on competing in this competition and finishing second against teams of Auburn engineering students,” said Jeff Lynn, president of CACC.
The team had to produce an assembly that consisted of a hub, a propeller that had to be three inches in diameter plus or minus 1/16th of an inch, and a pitch between 20-45 degrees. Their part was graded on the fit, functionality, dimensions, and appearance of the assembly.
“We have outstanding students here at CACC and we are training them to compete with students all over the world,” Lynn expressed. “I can’t say enough about the leadership of Pat Murphy and Josh Nelson. We are blessed to have the best faculty in the state, and they showed at this competition [that] we can compete with anyone.”
The competition was launched on Aug. 11 with an online Q&A session and concluded on Aug. 26 with final judging.
Auburn University plans to hold the competition annually with different design requirements for different applications.
“The best part of our students competing is that we discover what we are capable of and how much more we can accomplish,” Michael Barnette, Dean of Workforce at CACC, stated. “Tristan and Tanner have shown our students we can succeed at the highest levels.”
