machine’s raw data so that the team can monitor
its positioning and not end up off track.
“Not everything we work on is stuff we were
taught in school, so we definitely have to
improvise and do a lot of research like we would in
any industry,” Savage said. “That’s the hardest part,
but also the coolest part.”
It’s also higher stakes than some students are used
to, Balasubramaniam said.
“I came in as a freshman, and my classes weren’t
doing too much that was supercritical. If I screwed
up, there wasn’t much that didn’t work. That’s not
the case here. Everything has to work. Everything
is mission critical,” he said.
A few miles away, students worked on the
steel skeleton of the tunnel boring machine in
Wagner’s backyard.
The project is made possible through a
combination of private and university funding for
the $50,000 budget and sheer force of will.
When the team realized the machine needed a
metal sphere to help with maneuvering and that
buying one would cost anywhere from $600 to
$1,000, students purchased three woks made
of 18-gauge steel for $30 apiece, cut them into
pieces and rewelded them to fit the machine.
Paying a manufacturer to custom-make the steel
rings for the tunnel support system would have
cost nearly $6,000, so instead the team ordered a
device that bends half-inch steel rods into rings. It
takes three students rocking back and forth on the
device to bend the steel, but it works.
“Essentially everything we can do in-house, we do
in-house because it’s like an order of magnitude
cheaper,” Wagner said. “That’s the huge benefit of