Engineering students devise new designs for roll-up doors

More than 80 senior projects at the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) were recently on public display at the campus, ranging from a solar-powered garden irrigation system to a high-speed overhead door.

The projects represented months of work by teams of students who, in some cases, collaborated with area companies to solve a problem or come up with a better idea for something. One of the teams included students Marcelo Alves, Jesus Arguelles Chavira, Eric Fredericksen, and Assad Rashwan, redesigned a Rytec high-speed roll-up door. Rytec is one of the leading manufacturers of roll-up doors used in factories, food-processing plants, automobile garages and many other places. Some of the doors can open and close at speeds of more than 8 feet per second, useful in a refrigerated food plant, for example, to keep the cold air in and warm air out when people come and go.

The doors have electronic safety sensors and communication systems that are powered using replaceable batteries or a power cord. The students developed a wireless charging system that replaces the batteries or cord with a capacitor, which stores electricity like a battery, and has power transferred to it without wires.

The changes could be significant for Rytec, said Jeff Malinowski, director of engineering. Rytec will run additional testing and analysis to determine the idea’s feasibility. This was Rytec’s first time collaborating with MSOE students on their senior projects.

“There are some advantages to working with undergraduates because, after you’ve been in the industry for a while, you tend to get tunnel vision or just become accustomed to how things are done,” Malinowski said. “If you bring in somebody new, whether they’re fresh out of school or a student, they ask a lot of questions. And in many cases, it makes you take another look at what you’re doing.”