As a Mechanical Engineering Intern at Veir, in 10 weeks I had full ownership over designing, building, and validating a testbed for cryogenic actuated ball valves used in the liquid nitrogen delivery systems of superconducting power lines to insure they meet the utility industries' stringent standards. Along the way I developed P&IDs, SolidWorks CAD, technical drawings, code in Python to automate the controls, a custom GUI, and an electrical panel. I coordinated 10 vendors and a welding facility to source the cryogenic parts and get the testbed manufactured within a month. This testbed can run while the liquid nitrogen farm at the facility would otherwise be idle, and effectively doubles the farms utility.
Full CAD of the system
Custom GUI developed using the Kivy Framework. It communicates with the Labjack microcontroller to control and automate the system, allows for test parameters to be set, and displays live data and testbed statuses while running. When the experiment is over it saves the experiment data to files for future reference.
I designed and wired this electrical panel for the testbed following safety standards and best practices. It has a power switch, e stop, and reset cycle so that you don't regain power after undoing the e-stop.
Sourced parts: valves, sensors, meters, and more
Welding in progress
I worked with vendors across the cryogenics industry to acquire the parts I needed in only a few weeks. Unsurprisingly, due to lead times I had to swap some parts out, but I managed to get everything I needed in time. After all the parts arrived I sent them along with technical drawing to a weld shop and got started on my code while they got to work. I visited the weld shop twice ensuring that they understood my vision for the testbed, and then checking their work before they finished and sent over the testbed. This was a great learning experience and very helpful as I was able to correct multiple mistakes before they even became problems and clarify some things they were unsure of.
Testbed when running liquid nitrogen
Testbed when running liquid nitrogen
