Educational / Student Teams
Transmission Design Tool
Cal Poly Mechanical Systems Design · Team of 3 · Spring 2026
Collaboratively developed an Excel-based transmission design tool that converts customer requirements into validated gear, shaft, and bearing selections.
Overview
Developed a comprehensive transmission design tool that automated more than 1,500 engineering calculations and accelerated the selection of gears, shafts, and bearings for customer-defined design requirements.
My Role
Led the gear-design portion of the tool by researching and automating gear-sizing, strength, reliability, and life calculations. Also contributed to the broader Excel workflow, data lookup structure, conditional formatting, and final design challenge.
Project Overview
Over ten weeks, our three-person team developed an automated transmission design tool for the Final Design Challenge in Mechanical Systems Design. The tool received customer requirements including power, torque, output speed, working life, environmental conditions, and spatial constraints, then selected the most suitable gears, shafts, and bearings to satisfy those requirements.
Total calculations automated
1,538
Customer constraints considered
9
Development time
10 weeks
Gear Design Automation
My primary responsibility was developing the gear-design portion of the tool. I extensively studied Chapter 13 of Shigley's Mechanical Engineering Design to understand and automate the design considerations governing gear selection. The resulting workflow evaluated power transmission, output-speed requirements, reliability, working life in kilohours, and gear safety factors while automatically retrieving the necessary values from supporting data tables.
Gear calculations automated
172
Shaft & Bearing Selection
The completed tool combined the gear calculations with automated shaft and bearing selection. Lookup tables and conditional formatting streamlined the design process by identifying unfavorable design elements and exposing low safety factors, allowing the team to quickly focus on configurations requiring further attention.
Design Challenge & Reflection
During the final design challenge, the tool enabled our team to complete the transmission-design process in 42 minutes out of the three hours allotted. Beyond strengthening my understanding of gear design, this project gave me substantial experience with Excel automation and reinforced the importance of defining a clear scope before breaking a large engineering problem into manageable, interconnected tasks.
Final challenge completion time
42 minutes
Time allotted
3 hours