Name: Jake C. Sip     

Email: jake.c.sip@gmail.com                        

Phone: 435-668-6482

 

Major: Mechanical Engineering                   

Minor: Marketing

Number of Credits Completed:  175

Anticipated Year and Semester of Graduation: 2019, Spring

 

Title of Project: “Custom Gun” Design Internship

 

Abstract of Project*

 

This project was to participate in an internship for Justin Custom Guns in Toquerville Utah. This paid internship was for 60 hours and took place between December 17, 2018 and January 8, 2019. The goal of this internship was to redesign and prototype a few of the company’s current products. The products redesigned were components of a Remington 700 and a Ruger 10/22. The goal of this redesign was to solve known current design flaws of the product. This redesign required use of a solid modeling program such as Solidworks. The prototyping required the use of machinery such as mills and lathes. The larger purpose of this project was to gain experience to help stand out from other recent engineering graduates.

 

*This abstract was revised to have a past tense tone.

 

Larger Purpose

 

The larger purpose of this project was to help build my professional portfolio by gaining experience in engineering design, and prototyping.

 

Project Goal

 

For my EDGE Project, I did an internship for Justin Custom Guns where I redesigned and prototyped some of their products.

 

I was able to achieve this goal by working with the team at Justin Custom Guns over Christmas Break. The days I worked at this internship were December 17 - 21 & 28th, 2018 and January 2-5, 2019. This is two days more that originally planned. For the first three days of the internship, I helped them make couple of design changes to their products. Instead of doing one large redesign, we redesigned a few small things. This included: A new scope base design, a redesign of a Ruger 10/22, and a redesign of a Remington 700. All of these designs required me to drawn plans in Solidworks. Due to proprietary information of the company, I can only share the design of the scope base. The scope base drawing is below in the deliverables section (Figure 1).

 

After this redesign was finished, the rest of the first week was spent ordering materials for prototyping. During this time, I also helped them set-up and calibrate a CNC engraver that they had purchased (Figure 2). On December 28th, I came in to go over the supplies that had arrived, and I also started prototyping. The last week was spent prototyping. This was the part where I had the most fun. I got to do some machining on the milling machine (Figures 3-5), and some fiberglass work redesigning the stock of the 10/22 (Figure 6). A week or so after the internship was over, Justin Custom sent me some pictures that they had taken of the finished products. These are included below with the rest of the deliverables (Figures 7-12)

 

Outcomes

 

When I redesigned and prototyped a product for Justin Custom Guns:

 

• I gained experience in design and prototyping.

 

• Justin Custom Guns was able to implement these designs into their product lineup.

 

Because I have already discussed on how these outcomes were met, I will use this section to describe some of the things that I learned in designing and prototyping. I was able to gain a great deal of experience in prototyping and designing throughout the course of this project. The first thing that learned about redesigning a product is: that it is easiest to do a redesign when you have a problem to address. This gives an easily obtainable goal to work towards, and all designs can work around this goal. Two main problems that I helped them address is the bolt stop for the Remington 700, and the new stock for the Ruger 10/22. In the original design, both products were not ergonomic. The new designs were created with ergonomics and functionality in mind. These problems, along with others, were addressed to create a much better final product.

 

The other big thing that I learned is to design for ease of manufacturing. This was a humbling experience for me during this project. When I was designing the stock for the Ruger 10/22, I actually designed a stock that very expensive and time consuming to make. My mistake in the design of the 10/22 stock is the part of this project that gave me experience that my fellow engineering graduates have not yet been exposed to. Often new engineers make designs that are over expensive to manufacture or impossible to make. My error was that I wanted the stock to be made of fiberglass and resin, so that it would be lightweight and strong. This was a poor choice and turned out to be incredibly time consuming. Now that this prototype has been made, I can see that it would have been significantly easier to make this stock from wood. From here on out, I will now think through the entire manufacturing process when I design something. I think that this gives me an advantage over others in my position because they have yet to get out there and make mistakes like this. This mistake, with what I learned about manufacturing, well help me make better design choices and be an all-around better engineer.

 

 

 

Deliverables

 

The products delivered will be:

 

• A PDF of the final designs of the product

• Pictures of the final prototype

• Pictures of myself being involved in the process of making the prototype

 

The Figures are listed on the "Project Pictures" page:

 

Figure 1:                      The blue print of the scope base I helped design.

 

Figure 2:                      The CNC Engraver I helped set-up and calibrate.

 

Figures 3-6:                 Pictures of me machining the bolt stop in. I would have liked more pictures of myself                                                         machining, but it was awkward to ask people in the shop to stop what they were doing and                                             photograph me.

 

Figures 7-12:               Photos of the finished prototypes

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