Engineering Project Funding 4 LBCC

We are a group of Engineering students at Linn Benton Community College in Albany Oregon. Our group is entirely composed of Veterans of the Armed Forces. I am a Marine Veteran, 8 years served between 1999 and 2007. My Team has 2 Soldiers and 1 Sailor.

After trying to find an industry partner to fund our engineering project at our college. We are reaching out to fund a group project.  Our group endevors to build a devise to measure spring rate and deflection as a function of distance.

It's a project using different material and structural techniques to quantify the most practical structure in terms of cost, weight and other various practical engineering criteria. Not super exciting stuff but it's functional and should give us a tool to build on for later projects.

The problem lies not in the materials we are using, however in the cost of the load cell we would need to use. It would need to be a load cell capable of measuring from 0 to 2000 lbs of force minimum. Ideally this would go from 0 to 5000 lbsf, with a precision of 0.1% and linearity of 0.25% or less. Devises such as the Omega LC411-2K-USBH Capacitive Load cell, would cost $920 USD and need 8 weeks of lead time to produce. For those that are wondering why such an expensive sensor, we are attemting to measure displacement of structural steel in the range of less than 0.001 inch... Consider a piece of average grade printer paper is around 0.003 inch. Garbage in data input, garbage data output.

Our other problem is we have to design, build and test this device in 3 weeks.  Don't say we procrastonated, we didn't. This assignment was outlined 2 days ago (May 10th 2016), and we revised the concept today to be able to meet the deadline. We had orginanally come up with the improved mouse trap, combining the properties of a mouse trap and a trebuchet :)... While much more interesting, we decided on a project that we would have a more clear outline of the goals and outcomes (mostly for grading clearity and timeline for completion). Also the feasability of marketing such a devise at the price points it would require would be unlikely to sell a single unit. A spring rating devise could be marketed to automotive and motorsports teams. Maybe we attempt the rat-a-polt in a later term?

The money we raise up to the goal of $920 dollars will pay for a capacitive load cell for our device. Any funds over that number will be used to pay for the materials, tooling and fixtures for said devise. If we happen to exceed our costs, I will attempt to buy gold contributors a beer.

We need to fund this project within the next 7 days. As outlined above we have 3 weeks to design, build, test and document our project along with a final assesment of the project and a final paper. Assuming the 7 day timeline we will likely have 3-5 days shipping which leaves us at most 11 days to build, test, and document our project.

My team is a group of passionate and driven individuals. I would hate for funding to be the only thing that gets in the way of our group getting 100% overall grades in the course. I know I would love to keep my 100% status in the class.

We would be eternally greatful for any contrubutions toward our funding goal. It doesn't take a billionare to fund something like this project. It just takes a lot of good hard working people to give what they feel like giving. Even if you don't feel like contributing, please share this on facebook or your favorite social networking site.