Design, Build, Celebrate

College of Engineering

Design, Build, Celebrate

U of I cross-college and campus collaboration brings 150 LED triangles to Vandal Marching Band鈥檚 100^th anniversary halftime performance

Design, Build, Celebrate

Marching Band Celebrates 100 Years in Style

The 果冻传媒麻豆社 Vandal Marching Band didn't settle for 100 candles on its birthday cake. The band鈥檚 100^th anniversary included loud music, lots of dancing and bright lights 鈥� about 1,125 LEDs to be exact.

The band鈥檚 Homecoming football game performance included 150 new percussion triangles that light up when played, an engineering and design feat from a half a year鈥檚 worth of collaboration among four U of I colleges and hundreds of volunteers.

Band Director Spencer Martin pitched the idea to the College of Engineering to design a rebar triangle that could not only light up but be easily mass produced by non-engineers.

Mechanical engineering and computer science students were tasked with creating a prototype that could be used as a guide to create 150 triangles.

鈥淲e didn鈥檛 know how the triangle was held or even used,鈥� said engineering alumnus Bryce Dinger 鈥�19. 鈥淲e put those triangles into as many band member鈥檚 hands as possible to test our designs.鈥�

Holding a triangle while playing another instrument wasn鈥檛 feasible, so the team partnered with the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences to create a solution.

Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences instructor Chelsey Lewallen helped design a hip belt, complete with triangle holster, to hold the instrument when not in use. A team of apparel, textiles and design students mass produced the belts in just a few hours.

Engineering graduate student Selso Gallegos said it took more than 20 hours to laser cut the five-piece handles prior to assembly.

Band members volunteered weekends to assemble the triangles, stacking layers of wood to build the handles and soldering components on each instrument鈥檚 operating computer.

U of I Coeur d鈥橝lene's first master鈥檚 graduate in computer science, Nancy Ripplinger, and Associate Professor Bob Rinker designed the custom circuit boards to control the LED strips.

The triangle light show was a central part of the Marching Band鈥檚 Homecoming performance.

"Even coming from very different backgrounds, our commitment to testing and attention to detail to create a quality product is the same," said engineering alumnus Richard Baughman 鈥�19.