The Tunneling Times

Monthly Swissloop Tunneling Newsletter

After having won the Not-a-Boring Competition 2024 in Bastrop (TX, USA) and bringing home the Champion Award, the return of our container and thus our current machine “Groundhog Beta” on the 6th of June marked the beginning of a new season. As part of the new 2024-25 season, this monthly newsletter was launched to keep you posted on updates and changes happening at Swissloop Tunneling.

Unloading of Swissloop Tunneling’s container on the 6th of June

Immediately after getting our machine back, our engineers turned to disassembling and inspecting it for potential damages, launching corresponding repair measures if needed.
Once that was concluded, work on a new concept for our third machine iteration “Groundhog Gamma” was started, aiming to resolve inefficiencies and problems of “Groundhog Beta” and enhancing reliability. As part of this process, a proof of concept was developed within CAD. In addition, plans for a new software architecture to enhance monitoring and controlling of the machine’s actions were brought up alongside conducting an assessment of how we can improve the electronics. On the 20th of June, Swissloop Tunneling conducted a scrutineering event to which multiple partners were invited, allowing us to gather valuable technical and conceptual feedback.

Scrutineering event at Empa on the 20th of June

As an agile association of students of various majors, Swissloop Tunneling is always in need of new talent that wants to support the project and participate in the development of our machine. Thus, towards the end of the spring semester, we conducted a recruiting event with the goals of the upcoming season and change in team structure in mind. As part of this, we were excited to welcome more than 30 new members to the team, immediately starting with their onboarding process. We are looking forward to their valuable contributions to the project.

Once again looking back at the previous season, Swissloop Tunneling’s business division compiled highlights, crucial and memorable moments, learnings and much more into the annual report of 2023-24, accessible on the “Media” page on our website.

We are looking forward to the upcoming season and want to thank each party that contributed to the success of the previous and upcoming season! Swissloop Tunneling will keep you posted on monthly updates using this newsletter via email or on our website.

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