Pneumatic Lab Capstone Profile: Jake Parsons

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Team leader Jake Parsons is a man of few words, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The Fishers, Indiana, native knows how to cut through the clutter, answering questions in short bursts that prove his knowledge without wasting the time of those around him. So when we asked him what he’s most concerned about working in the group handling the Purdue-Proportion-Air capstone project, he offered a simple answer:

“How we are going to pull everything together in the end.”

Majoring in electrical engineering technology, Parsons said that he chose to work on the project because of his desire to work in controls. Another big point of interest was gaining experience in pneumatic control systems, which Parsons and the team hope to make a focal point of the curriculum they are working on. With this knowledge, Parsons wrote, he’s been surprised to see how similar pneumatic systems are to electrical systems, a fact he’s discovered throughout the collaboration between Proportion-Air and the four-person team.

Like his teammates, Parsons said that the best part of the experience so far was going to Florida, where his team and a member of the Proportion-Air staff met with

Proportion-Air president Dan Cook to run through various systems and see mock ups of different products.

“One of the experiments that really captured our interest was a rig that controlled the position of a pneumatic cylinder with an ultrasonic sensor,” Parsons gave in a first-hand account. “As your hand moved closer to the sensor, the rod on the cylinder would move proportionally.” In this account, Parsons also mentioned that this was his first time seeing some of these parts in action.

Of his trip to Florida, Parsons was able to offer what we’ve come to expect from his straight-forward nature:

“It was very neat to see.”

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