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Team 40

Team Members

Faculty Advisor

Matt Lewis
Jason Hnath
William Miller
Bryan Saltos
Owen Trickett

Ryan Cooper

Sponsor

Sweet Acre Farm

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Compost and Mulch Spreader

The ME-40 team was tasked with creating a machine capable of assisting Sweet Acre Farm in efforts to curate their crop beds. Sweet Acre Farm employs a method consisting of dumping wheelbarrows of compost along the beds and spreading with rakes. For area between the beds, wood chips are tossed down from 5-gallon buckets. The current method is both inefficient in cost and time. To combat the issues faced, ME-40 was looking to adapt a commercial manure spreader to meet the needs of SAF. However, due to unseen circumstances, the team pivoted to creating a smaller scale model and individual components. These subcomponents will consist mainly of a beater, a rake system, and an auger. The compost will be moved through the beater and rake system to ensure an even and proper spread, while the auger is used to move the wood chips to be deposited at the proper location. The project will result in a group of subcomponent machines that could be further evaluated and grown to act as “drop-in” parts for a full sized spreader and could be used to greatly improve efficiency of the process.