The Chance to Go Medieval Was Too Good To Pass Up
CSU’s RPL seized offer to create the Battering Ram
Mike Brohard
None of what the lab builds seems normal, at least not to the average person walking down the street.
Vaccine platforms, plasma chambers, laser systems and machine parts have all been constructed at the Rapid Prototyping and Applied Engineering Lab at the Powerhouse, a major part of Colorado State University’s Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering. Don’t forget the electrochemical cells or the ultrasonic metal atomizer, all constructed by students in the engineering school, the lab run by professionals.
Nothing most people use in everyday life, but even the group can get surprised by a request at times.
“Then someone comes and says, can you build a battering ram, and we’re like,’ yeah, we’ll add medieval war machines to our repertoire,’” said John Mizia, the director of RPL. “That really rounds us out fully.”
What began as an idea from Director of Athletics John Weber turned into a talking point with a few people, then a very serious discussion once Weber found out, one, it could actually be done, and two, thrilled when it could be accomplished in house.
It was at the Ramily event this summer when Jason Quinn, an engineering professor and the operating director of the Energy Institute at CSU finally had a chance to meet Weber in person and find out the rumors were true, the athletic department really wanted a battering ram to use at Canvas Stadium.
“Immediately I thought, RPL, no problem. John had a vision, then all of these people came together, and it ended up being what it was,” Quinn said. “All of these different pieces came into what it was, but as soon as John said I want this to be what it is, I felt we at RPL would just dominate. It was pieces from everybody’s creative mind. We moved from casting the ram head to a local carved wooden ram head. Everything else was designed by Matt (Willman, the RPL manager and a research engineer) and assembled by our great students and delivered just in time.
“This is just a testament to John’s leadership and the great people he has is there’s nothing they can’t do. If you can think of it, you can build it.”
Which is the magic of RPL, and a major selling point for the engineering program at the school. The Powerhouse is located north of campus, so people outside the program might not even know it is part of the campus. If you’re an aspiring engineer looking for a program, the facility is a beacon to draw you into the school.
“I have probably learned more here in a year than I have in school in three years. It’s the reason I chose CSU over a bunch of other schools is because they’re known for hands-on engineering over theoretical,” student Wallace Tucker said. “We do manufacturing and context. We understand how it works, and that’s a lot of what you learn here.”
It’s probably the coolest project I’ve worked on so far, so far being key.Wallace Tucker
Once the lab was given the clearance to build it, it was a rush to meet the delivery date of Sept. 7 for the home opener. After Willman nailed down the final design, which took a bit of time, a team of 11 students had roughly five weeks to complete construction, which also included the two metal doors which would be attached to the walls of the northwest opening where the team enters the field on gamedays.
There were some short days. There were also quite a few long ones, arriving around the time of sunrise and leaving after midnight. The students – Tucker, Labon Hillberry, George Poggemeyer, Jorge Vivanco, Alex Willman, Ben Gujer, Wesley Holmes, Grantland Rice, Connor Francis, Owen Klein and Miles Mizia – worked when they could on the project, often in groups.
The original thought was something handheld. Willman had a better idea.
“The initial concept, when Jason came to us, they wanted something we can carry out onto the field. Instantly, I thought it would have to be small, a log with a ram’s head, police-style battering ram,” he said. “I thought that’s not going to be that cool and people aren’t going to be impressed. The meeting at the stadium, we started thinking about something bigger. I think that’s where we started to get the vision. What we have now is a little bigger than where we started.”
Thousands of pounds bigger, with steel and sturdy wood for a frame, the final design becoming very striking and impressive. The frame itself even resembles the Aggie ‘A’ on the side of Horsetooth a bit.
All of the materials – especially the steel – had to be moved from the lab to the basement, requiring a forklift. The more the students worked on, the cooler the project became.
“The first aspect was the scale of it. Usually, the average part we make is maybe a little bit bigger than two fists combined, so you go from that to something you need the forklift for,” Vivanco said. “It becomes a big challenge pretty quick, and that includes all the half-inch sheets we had to take down to the basement, because all the ornate designs are water-jet cut in the basement. There were a lot of logistics we aren’t the most equipped to do because we don’t normally do stuff to that scale.”
The other part was the battering ram itself, particularly the carved rams head. For that, the group had to go to outside help, once again finding it close by in Ardella Hawks and Buckhorn Carvings.
Again, not a normal request for her. Again, an opportunity she couldn’t refuse.
She was given Australian Elm to carve, which is very dense and made the task with her chainsaw more difficult, but necessary. She also knew she couldn’t use a regular design for the horns, because if they were extended too far from the head, the chance they’d eventually break off became greater.
“I’m very proud of it, actually. The log was huge, and I was worried because of how the horns had to go,” Hawks said. “I looked at so many photographs and all the horns stick out, but we couldn’t have anything sticking out, so it took a lot of thinking to keep it hard and sturdy.
“It was one of the hardest carvings I’ve done.”
It took her three days, delivering it the next day.
The wood ram head was a bit of a concern, so John tested it the way any normal engineer would – by striking it with a hammer multiple times and listening to the sound. Some tried-and-true tests cannot be replaced by technology.
The doors, which required some sturdy hinges (the CSU ERC machine shop chipped in with the welding) and the use of high strength neodymium magnets, so they stay open once slammed, were tested over and over. Testing it altogether was, as one would expect, fun for the group.
There’s a certain amount of sway needed to open the gates. Naturally, that limit was surpassed in the name of science.
“We were cranking on it,” Tucker said. “When Jorge and I were doing it on Thursday … ‘there were a couple of times John was like, ‘easy there,’” Vivanco added.
But to Vivanco, there was nothing like seeing it used for the first time. He also knew he was going to look at it differently than most of the fans in the stands, from the point of view of an engineer and as someone who helped with construction.
It was a school project for which he wouldn’t get a classroom grade for, but he knew all of the students involved were grading themselves. Proudly so.
“We just knew no matter what, it was going to look pretty good. I think it was striking, at least for me, the industrial setting and general-public setting are different,” he said. “We were worried about, oh, this door won’t close, and everybody else is just gawking at it. You get used to the level of quality you have to have in an industrial setting. I don’t think a lot of people understand the number of checks and balances and the amount of eyes that have to be on something.
“To me, I like the way it sounds when you hit the gates. The way the gates are made, it’s a bolt pattern around the outside, but the inside basically acts as a drum and smacks against the crossmember. It’s just, ‘pop, pop, pop’ and kind of resonates. I think if they mic’d those up at the game it would be cool.”
At the Rocky Mountain Showdown, the crew was recognized on the field for the work they did in helping create a new pregame tradition at Colorado State. Call it the Battering Ram, or the medieval war machine, even no-legged CAM, it will be part of the fabric on game day here forward.
They worked on it all the way up until the morning of the first game, then watched a tow truck come and hook it up to take it to the stadium.
“It’s probably the coolest project I’ve worked on so far, so far being key,” Tucker said. “Maybe it will be something else that’s super cool. The work with vaccines is amazing. It was a way to make vaccines more efficiently and without the harsh chemicals that are used by using UV light.”
Nothing they build in the RPL is what the students consider normal, but this was a request they never expected. They did the work, creating a piece of history in a modern lab on campus most folks don’t know exists.
Also, a project most aspiring engineers cannot put on their resume.
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