Final Reflection

Over the course of the Fall 2011 term I have learned a great deal about engineering through all of my classes. However the most important skills I have picked up have come from ME 250 due to its applied nature. Specifically I learned a lot about design and manufacturing in the context of completing a mechanical engineering project. My background knowledge of the material presented in class was insubstantial so overall I made a lot of progress. Beginning with the design process, I learned that in order to create a successful design one has to begin at a broad, general level and progress through multiple steps focusing on progressively smaller details. Also, in order to properly go through the design process, knowledge of the manufacturing procedures used to create the final object must be at the forefront. In particular, ME 250 taught me about motors, gears, bearings, springs, and screws. In lab we learned how to use CAD through the program Solidworks and how to conduct simple engineering experiments. While I am far from an expert on these topics, I now know how these pieces fundamentally work. Overall the most beneficial aspect of this class was being able to apply the principles learned in lecture first hand and learn from experience. Especially physically learning to use the machines in the shop such as the mill and lathes helped to teach me about how things are actually made. Another essential aspect to ME 250 is the ability to work as a part of a team and manage time well. While our team was far from perfect as far as time management goes, we certainly learned from our mistakes and are more focused on accomplishing tasks well before the deadline in order to leave time to combat unexpected problems. As far as the teambuilding aspect, our team worked well together. This made learning about teamwork fairly easy. In general ME 250 is a very useful class that taught me about what it means to be an engineer.

While there are many positive features to this class there are also some ways it can be improved. One big potential improvement could be increased access to mills and lathes (especially mills) throughout the term. With three different classes sharing the machine shop, times had to be booked days in advance. Because of this, it was difficult for us to complete our machine on time. Also, while the amount of work required to complete the machine paid off in the end and greatly added to the value of the experience, it is not fair for a four credit class. Throughout the term my teammates and I spend an absurd amount of time in the lab and in the library completing assignments and making sure our machine turned out good. For future classes, the process should be accelerated early in the term so that the workload can be evenly spread out. The total workload would be more manageable this way if it cannot be made smaller.

As far as my personal performance in this class goes, I believe that there is not much room for improvement. One mistake that I made was dealing with the modeling for the required motor torque which severely set us back during the competition. The details of this mistake are chronicled in a previous blog post. Also, as a team we started late on some of the milestones and made some manufacturing errors that could have been easily prevented.

In final reflection, I am proud of the overall performance of our team and the final result of our machine. The staff did a great job teaching a mixture of hands-on and theoretical engineering that led us to build a competent robot. I am proud of receiving the fourth seed in the tournament despite the failure of our machine during the competition. I am looking forward to future classes of similar nature to build upon the foundation of ME 250.

Alex