Junkyard Wars 2018: Fire Engines

Skills

Project Management, Welding, Power Tools, Mechanical Design, Leadership, Creative Thinking, Problem Solving

Project Overview

A two-day extracurricular challenge, Junkyard wars is an annual ASME tradition at Texas Tech University. This year’s challenge was to create a “fire engine” capable of carrying water to fires, putting out the fires from over 10ft away, and carrying a survivor to the hospital. The teams finish the challenge by competing against each other with the victor completing the challenge in the fastest time. My team consisted of myself and ten other engineering students from various disciplines and an advisor. As one of the senior members of the group, I took on the leadership role and split the team with half working on the vehicle and half working on the water carrying and delivery. At the end of the challenge, we had a functioning electric fire engine. We struggled in the competition only because the water delivery system placed us slightly within the 10 foot boundary, resulting in the majority of the team having to spend time in the “hospital” (penalty box). I gained valuable leadership, project management, hands-on engineering, and build experience from this project.